Computer automatically populating web page fields

[Lurk R]

Just hoping that someone may be able to point me in the right direction.

I work in the IT industry and like most others in this industry, routinely get asked questions by friends / relatives etc. who assume that "working in IT" means knowing everything from how to program the space shuttle to how to rebuild a supercray from a meccano set! A friend asked me a question which I'm a little stumped on however.

He shares a house with 3 others and there is a computer that they all use. He has shown me how on numerous websites that placing the cursor in particular fields brings up various options - especially user account names, emaill addresses, etc. For example, when using Hotmail, clicking in the username field brings up a dropdown list of account names of people who have used hotmail on the same computer. Likewise, when he goes to send an email, clicking in the "to" field brings up a list of all email addresses that have been previously written to.

My first thought was cookies and I started to explain what cookies are and how they work - went to show him how to delete them, etc. We even re-booted the computer. So of course I was quite surprised to find the drop down boxes still appearing with all the details! Some of the other websites that he uses also have similar fields like user names or user ids which give a dropdown list to choose from. Some of these user id's are not even related to the particular website that he is browsing.

Because of the shared nature of the computer he doesn't want to have visibility of these drop-down values to the other users and hence is rather curious on how to disable this function. I haven't been able to help him so thought I would ask this minefield of information on PPRuNe.

The computer is using Windows ME and the web browser is IE 5.5 - a colleague told me that an auto complete function comes with this version but I turned that off and yet the problem still appears.


If anyone has any ideas that I can pass on, we would both be very appreciative.

Thanking you,

[What_does_this_button_do?]

In IE.

Tools
Internet Options
Content
Auto Complete - turn these options off and it won't populate!

[Flybywyre]

Try disabling the "auto-complete" feature.
This should do the trick
Regards
FBW

[Lurk R]

Thanks for help so far peoples. Unfortunately, as mentioned in 2nd last para, I was told about that functionality, disabled it but the damn things keep re-appearing??? Does the auto-complete just finish off web addresses in the taskbar or does it also try to populate selected fields?

Thanks,

[What_does_this_button_do?]

If you do what we said and clear forms and clear passwords it should sort it out. If not then upgrade to IE6. I don't have any problems with that.

B

[IThink]

It's a while since I used ME and IE5.5, but I do remember having a similar problem with the auto complete and also parental controls.

Even uninstalling IE had no effect.

If you are familiar with the registry you can turn off the function within the registry and also delete the autocompletes that have been "saved". That may help, but only do it if you are confident....:D

In the end I gave up and got IE6 and XP. No problems since then and of course XP will allow separate profiles for each user.

[PaperTiger]

Maybe I'm not following this but auto-complete has nothing to do with the contents of a drop-down list :confused:. Those entries are inserted by the server (cgi, asp or something) or by a bit of onLoad() JavaScript. If clearing the cookies hasn't emptied it then your 'preferences' must be stored on the server - ie nothing you can do about it.

[fobotcso]

To prove or disprove the last idea, go to a site where drops downs occur and then disconnect. Start to fill in some of the fields. If drop-downs still happen, it's not the server.

[BRL]

I know in Win XP you get to a screen during startup and it asks who wants to log in. You can set it so your mates each have their own individual settings, for example your mate can log on with his name and enter his password and he can have his own private settings for everything such as favorites, start menu, OE, IE ect. I don't know if this solves his problem but its worth looking at.