How do I disable the "remember me" feature of Instant Messaging clients?

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For a professional enviroment such as a cyber cafe I can see 2 solutions for your problem. Neither of them are easy, but they are both possible.

1. Use Gaim, and hire a programmer. Gaim is an Open instant messenger, a hired developer could probably get the functionality you want in 2 to 10 hours. I don't know if you can settle for its level of compatibility, it doesn't always handle voice or file transfers correctly, but as a Cybercafe you probably don't even want other people files on your machines.

or

2. Set up your machines to reinstall a fresh image on every reboot, and reboot every logout, and every night. If you have a server, behind the scenes somewhere, it could pass out disk images, to client machines over the network. Booting the machines would take a little longer, in my experience its about 1 to 5 minutes (depending on software), but when I have done it, it was to remove problems such as user settings, virii, user software, and it worked like a charm.

Leo nice site, first time poster long time reader , I work as a technician for http://www.freetechsupport.us if you ever want to stop by my site sometime I'd love to see some one as knowledable as yourself up at our help forums.

Leo,

Maybe the solution is simpler than we think.

Firstly, clearing out the username and password cache in Explorer's autocomplete function ensures that another person's details don't creep up unwanted.

Secondly, I use a programme called HistoryKill, which does just as the name implies. It can be configured to run at every browser shutdown, thus eliminating all cookies, and clearing out the info in the index.dat file.

This works fine for us at the office (where no servers or admin's are involved), when we want to check emails, or use Y!Messenger without getting caught ;-)

here, i know a solution, tell your people to just not click it...and if they do, then that sux for them cause someone else will get into it.

There are hardware solutions available, usually deployed in schoolar computer rooms. They are PCI cards, and intercept all write request to the HD, and cache them on another partition. On each boot, the computer will forget the written data and therefore start at the same point. All cookies, history, temporary files etc. will have been gone.

Well, if I understood well the question, the awnser is simples: just alter the variables "MSNSignInMRU0X" on the file called com.microsoft.Messenger.plist

Howdy... you might want to check out the "Shared Computer Toolkit" from Microsoft. It has profile and drive locking features (tossing out all changes since the admin told it to lock) while still allowing specified system updates (virus scanning data, operating system updates, etc). Much easier to manage than the PCI card drive locking system.

(In fact, that is why it was developed... as an answer to some issues they had with the Gates Foundation granted machines in schools and libraries. Those machines had PCI drive locks and some OS tweaks.)

It's a freebie on their website, and it's a good product. (Speaking as a full-time *nix guy, that's a fairly rare thing for me to say. ;)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx

And if you don't want a MS product to do this job, maybe you should just go all the way and maybe replace with software from these guys:

http://www.userful.com

Another good product, with fully functioning downloadable demos. :) (The multi-headed machine setups they trumpet are very cool, but all of their stuff can be run as traditional stand-alone workstations as well.)

Cheers!

all of my contacts dissapeard!!!!! MSN IS SKREWED!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW DO I GET MY CONTACTS BACK!!!

yeah, i've gone through you article and all is well and nicce, but i have a problem. and this my problem i know you can solve for me.
here is the question. what are the relativities of computer with internet. this is what i was searching for when bursted into your articles.
thanks. please send me the answer thruogh my email.

how do i delete the different email addresses ive used to sign in on, on msn. on the signing in page?

The fix for this is to use control panel, user accounts, then selcet your user name. then under related tasks in the left pane select manage my network passwords. From there remove the offending user account. problem solved.

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