Keeping yourself logged in.

[harsaphes]

Hey all quick question. Do you leave yourself logged into your favorite websites?..or do you logout and back in when you have to?....any reason/security wise to not?
thanks.

 

[devil22]

I stay logged in, except sites that don't allow that anyway like my two bank websites. I dunno, I haven't had any malware in like 7 years, I know not to run things from the internet unless there is a certain level of trust, i.e. fortune 500 company programs, or stuff that gets talked about on forums I trust like this one.

I see you're running Windows 7, if you were running XP it might be a good idea to log out, but Windows 7 has all the security features you can basically put into an general desktop OS, and it's pretty hard to infect Windows 7 unless you fall for the trojan download stuff. So just be smart about what you download, keep OS + 3rd party programs (especially flash, air, java, acrobat) patched and up to date, don't disable security features like the firewall, etc. and you'll be ok staying logged in.

 

[bigdogchris]

Hey all quick question. Do you leave yourself logged into your favorite websites?..or do you logout and back in when you have to?....any reason/security wise to not?
thanks.

I stay logged in everywhere on my personal PC because I'm the only person who uses it.

 

[SoAndSo]

i stay logged in constantly. My fiance and flatmate use my computer as well. They both know if anything goes wrong i will put a password on.

 

[harsaphes]

thankyou

 

[TechieSooner]

I stay logged in everywhere on my personal PC because I'm the only person who uses it.

QFT.

Now, on my work machine, or any other computer that isn't mine... I log out.

But yea, on my personal laptop: it's encrypted and I lock the OS when I'm not using it... So I leave that stuff enabled and use the Remember Me features.

You could do the same thing in XP if you ran under a user account. But user accounts in XP are a PITA compared to Vista/7, where escalation is much easier.

 

[Azhar]

I stay logged in at work and home. If I am away from my computer at work, I do a WinKey-L.

 

[TechieSooner]

I stay logged in at work and home. If I am away from my computer at work, I do a WinKey-L.

Just at work? I'm in that habit at home. Honestly, it's a good habit Because you can't bypass the Windows signon without having to reboot the machine. And when you reboot the machine, the HD gets un-mounted and then it's encrypted again, requiring a password.
Else if you leave it logged on and someone hops on, they'd be free to do anything they wanted.

 

[Azhar]

well at home my computer's always in sleep mode when I'm not using it. It requires my password when waking it up. But once woken, it's always on and always logged in. I just put it to sleep myself.

 

[TechieSooner]

Ahhh OK. That works, too.

I can't put mine to sleep because then I can't access it with LogMeIn if I ever needed to.

 

[Raxiel]

I used to be realy bad, I used to have a usb stick with a copy of firefox portable on it with a load of saved logins for websites.

Then I lost the memory stick. It turned up eventualy but not after i'd changed all my passwords because i couldn't be sure if they'd been found by some random stranger.

That firefox installation got shredded once I got it back and realised how dangerous that convinence was, i'm a lot more carefull now.

In hindsight if you can be sure you won't loose it, and put protection on it in case you do (like the FF master password) it could be safer than leaving your password on every computer you use.

 

[Azhar]

Ahhh OK. That works, too.

I can't put mine to sleep because then I can't access it with LogMeIn if I ever needed to.

Wake on LAN doesn't wake your computer up when accessing a sleeping computer with LogMeIn?