Disabling Auto Complete in Internet Explorer

You already know about Auto Complete from the address bar. We have taken care of that privacy problem by clearing the file that stored the information, as was shown in the section about removing the address bar suggestions. However, that is not the only situation where Auto Complete attempts to provide assistance. Another situation where Auto Complete tries to give a helping hand is when you are filling in text boxes on Web pages. Auto Complete in this situation works exactly the same as Auto Complete with the address bar. As you begin to fill in the text box, several suggestions will appear, based on information that you have already typed in.

To get an idea how this works in action, visit a search site such as Google (www.google.com) and start to type in words for which you want to search. When you do so, words similar to the ones you have typed in the box on other visits to the site will appear. This capability allows anyone that uses your computer to be able to see what other users of the computer have searched for on the site, even if the browser history was cleared.

Clearly, having this feature enabled would be a big concern if you were concerned about your privacy. Disabling the Auto Complete feature is not very difficult and will completely take care of this privacy concern. Follow these steps to put an end to Auto Complete:

1. Open Internet Explorer.

2. Click Tools and select Internet Options.

3. Select the Content tab and click the Auto Complete button.

4. Once the Auto Complete Settings window has loaded, just uncheck all of the boxes that are listed under Use Auto Complete For. This will disable this privacy concern completely.

5. Although you have the Auto Complete window open, you can also click the two clear buttons at the bottom of the window to clear any data that is in the file stores for this data.

6. When you are finished, just click the OK button to save your changes.

7. Select OK once more to close Internet Options and activate your changes.

Auto Complete is now a thing of the past. You will not have to worry about people using your computer being automatically shown all of the things that you type into your address and text boxes.