Clearing Browser's history (WAS: Privacy ...)

[Ulrich Babiak]

At 14:51 15.05.1996 -0700, T.Dowling wrote:

>Has anyone worked up any sort of script to wipe a browser's cache and/or
>history file after a period of inactivity?  There are users, after all,
>who aren't ogling the Playmate of the Month, but are instead using Deja
>News to dig up articles on depression, or divorce, or coping when you've
>just been diagnosed with AIDS...  Whatever, there are people whose privacy
>needs go beyond not letting someone else see the screen; they may have a
>justifiable desire to make sure the next person to sit down can't just hit
>the back button a few times to see what they were reading.

Well, I don't know how to do it while the browser is running, however,
under Win95 there are 2 ways to clear the history (I am talking
about the box that opens up after you click on the down arrow next
to the LOCATION field):

1) you set up a user "public" or whatever, make all the settings
 in all the applications the user runs and then you copy the 
user's user.dat into a safe place, because all the configurable 
stuff as well as the history is kept in each user's user.dat
in $windows/profiles/user. (Take care of the file attributes,
user.dat is a hidden, read-only file!)
Each time at bootup you restore the user.dat
You inform users to reboot the computer before leaving in order
to "clear it up".
This is how I keep all the settings ok - and it makes it easy for
non-technical staff to deal with screwed up configuration by simply
rebooting. 
2) you export the netscape part of the registry into a text file,
then you look for the settings you want to keep (like homepage
location, history URLs etc.) You adjust all these settings to
the desired value. Save the file with a .reg-extension - if you 
double-click it, it will be imported into the registry. As an
alternative, you can import it at bootup with a command in your
autoexec.bat.

Uli
--
Ulrich Babiak             |       Buero  ubabiak at stbib-koeln.de   
Dipl.-Netzer :-)          |       privat ubabiak at dom.de
StadtBibliothek Koeln     |       http://www.dom.de/FreiRaum/uli/ub.html
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