I need advice, or concrete help, concerning a technical matter. I have
been abroad for the past four days, and have been accessing Wikipedia
from internet cafes. When I log on, I of course have avoided checking
the box that asks if I want the computer to remember by password across
sessions. Nevertheless, I have just discovered that the computers I
have been using now long me on automatically. I do not really care
that someone might end up using my own user name in the future, we can
sort it out then. But since I am a sysop I am very concerned about the
potential security breach. Anyone going to Wikipedia from this
terminal, it seems, will automatically log on as me, and have the
ability to delete pages and ban users.
I regret the potential problems this can cause Wikipedia; all I can say
is I do not know what went wrong.
Is there a way to make sure that the terminals I have used in the last
four days will not log on automatically to my username? What can I do
the next time I weant to log on, to make sure that the next user of the
terminal will not be able to log on automatically? As I said, I did
not check the box, and I didnt see anything under my user preferences
or settings that would ensure that I would NOT log on automatically.
I know this is my responsibility, but I am leaving for my field-site
tomorrow and will probably not have access to the internet. If someone
understands what happened and can fix it, I would appreciate it if they
would. In any event, I will have internet access again in a couple of
weeks and want to make sure I dont create the same problem...
Steve Rubenstein