[Libs-Or] A somewhat technical question involving gmail and persistant login...

[Martin, Greg]

Thank you very much to those who replied to me and to the two people who came up with the solution (below) that I (and two IT staffers) hadn't thought of...exactly what I was hoping for!

Thanks again to everyone who was kind enough to brainstorm a solution,

gm



Greg Martin
Adult Services Librarian
Wilsonville Public Library
8200 SW Wilsonville Road
Wilsonville, OR 97070
503-682-2744
martin at wilsonvillelibrary.org<mailto:martin at wilsonvillelibrary.org>
________________________________
From: Michelle Lenox [lenoxm at uw.edu]
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2014 9:49 AM
To: Martin, Greg
Cc: libs-or at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
Subject: Re: [Libs-Or] A somewhat technical question involving gmail and persistant login...

We had the same problem. We eventually arrived at this solution, which is currently working for us:

You can force Chrome in open in incognito mode automatically. This way, it theoretically forgets all login info (& everything else) when the browser is closed, regardless of what boxes people click.

In Windows 7, this is how it works. I imagine it's similar in other operating systems.

Right-click on the shortcut and click "properties." Under "target," at the very end, after the filepath, hit space and then type: -incognito

If you want to also force Chrome to start with your homepage, rather than the Chrome incognito start page (which may be confusing), type the url for your homepage at the end:

ex. "....\chrome.exe" -incognito www.google.com<http://www.google.com>

In IE, similarly: "...iexplorer.exe" -private www.google.com<http://www.google.com>

Best,
Michelle Lenox
Seaside Public Library


On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Martin, Greg <gmartin at wilsonvillelibrary.org<mailto:gmartin at wilsonvillelibrary.org>> wrote:
Hi All,

We’re having a problem here at the library and I thought I’d throw it out to everyone to see if anyone in libraryland has a great solution.

We have about 20 publically-accessible computers, many of which are occupied at any given time. Quite frequently, patrons are accessing their email. It turns out that gmail has a checkbox called ‘Stay signed in’ that is checked by default with a lovely green checkmark. If the patron unchecks this box before signing in…no problem. If the patron remembers to log out of email…no problem. If, as frequently happens, the patron just clicks the browser shut and walks away…problem! The next person who accesses gmail ends up signed into in the previous user’s account. I’m not sure if this happens with IE and Firefox, or just with Chrome.

The solution would be to somehow automatically uncheck the ‘Stay signed in’ checkbox at the login screen. Way back when, this checkbox was unchecked by default. Obviously, Google wants to collect as much data as possible on gmail users, so they globally changed the setting, but this option works poorly in a public setting like ours. An online search led me to a variety of supposed solutions (e.g.  to uncheck the box then NOT delete cookies; to change an HKEY via ResEdit, etc.), none of which work. Also, patrons don’t read signs. They just don’t.

We have the ability to make our PCs restart at the end of each session. This would solve the problem, but is non-ideal for several reasons I won’t bore you with, but you might be able to imagine.

So, for those of you who have read this post to the bitter end…do any solutions spring to your fertile mind? If so, please share!

Thanks!

--gm

Greg Martin
Adult Services Librarian
Wilsonville Public Library

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