[Sandra Cheng]

Hi,

I noticed that after I plugged in the password to the password-protected sections of my website, that section remains open and accessible to anyone who uses that coputer. Unfortunately, I did this on the classroom computer and I don’t want every one who teaches before and after me to have access to those sections. What do I do to reset the site to ask for the password again?

Thanks,
Sandra

[Elizabeth Alsop]

Hi Sandra,

Hmm, my guess is that once you log on to the protected page, the password is getting saved as a cookie, and being automatically “remembered” for subsequent users. I’m assuming that this is happening even after you log out of the OpenLab?

One possibility would be to clear the browser cache and cookies, restart the browser, and try again – but then, I’m not sure if you have the ability to do this on a classroom computer.

Maybe others have suggestions about this, and what Sandra could do to fix it?

Thanks!
Elizabeth

[Scott]

I think that’s it too–I would hope that cache and cookies would happen automatically when you logged off a classroom computer, but I realize I’m not sure if you log in to a specific account when in CSI classroom. In any case, it’s good practice to ‘clear history’ including cookies and cache whenever you walk away from a public computer…

Best,
Scott

[Sandra Cheng]

To answer your question Bree, it doesn’t matter whether I log in or not. In fact, there’s not much use for students to log in except to author a post. I just tried yours and Scott’s suggestion on a second browser. Clearing cookies works, clearing the cache doesn’t do it. I can make sure to do clear cookies/cache on my own browsers but I’m not sure that’s going to happen for students when they use public computers which seems to raise the limitations of password protection vs creating a totally private site. I still have to muddle through what implications there are, if any, for my courses.

thanks for you help, Sandra

[Sandra Cheng]

sorry I just realized it wasn’t Bree on that first post, but Elizabeth, thank you!

[Elizabeth Alsop]

No problem, Sandra! And I should have been clearer — I meant to ask whether the problem persisted after logging off the classroom computer, as well as the OpenLab?

Thanks again for raising this issue!

[Sandra Cheng]

I noticed that the password protected areas remain unlocked even after a week, and that’s after the computer has been started/shut down many many times for different classes over the course of a week. I guess the browsers are not set to empty their caches/history/etc within a week’s time. I’m not sure how much control I have over that since there’s little I can do on the classroom computers (ie, I can’t download ANY software) though I might be able to fiddle with the preferences.

Sandra