Cannot Clear History in SFTP 1.5

At the time of the posting, January 23rd 2006, I am well aware that version 2.0 of Smart FTP is available. None-the-less I am somewhat stuck with version 1.5. I work in higher education and my university is now running a full schedule with day and night classes, plus additional hours for student work. I cannot access my Windows XP clients for upgrades. Had I known about this problem two weeks ago, I could have performed the upgrades; now, for the next several days I'm stuck.

A user called my department today to complain that Smart FTP 1.5 was storing username and passwords to accessed sites. At first I thought that this was a percieved problem with clearing the History cache. Unfortunately it did no good to clear the History. After I re-launch the application the information returns. Let me make this perfectly clear, THE INFORMATION RETURNS after it appears to have been deleted.

I have always been disappointed that the educational version of Smart FTP has the ability to store passwords. It's counterintuitive. I can't imagine any educational facility safe enough where people would save their personal credentials on a school computer. Furthermore, the default installation of Smart FTP has always saved credentials. If this feature absolutely must be present, I would think that it could be a strictly optional. Nor do I understand why the tools to clear the history are buried so deeply in the application. The most recent version of Firefox could provide an example, with "clear personal data" and an option to always clear data upon exit.

This brings me back to Smart FTP. Version 1.5 appears to delete credentials but they reappear upon relaunch. What is going on here?

Smart FTP is in use at this school only for historical reasons. If the decision comes down to me I will not install it again.

-Academic User

I've performed further tests with SmartFTP version 2.0 and the bug is occuring in the new version as well. I will be completely uninstalling all versions of SmartFTP.

-Academic User

Hi, you must have "save history" enabled to save the changes to history.

Hi, you must have "save history" enabled to save the changes to history.

There's no difference if the "save history" box is checked or unchecked when the history entry is deleted. The credentials are still stored. On re-launch the application immediately logs back into the FTP account that was supposedly deleted.

-Academic User

I think you should uncheck "Restore Workspace on Start" in Tool>Settings>Interface.

I think you should uncheck "Restore Workspace on Start" in Tool>Settings>Interface.

Okay! Thank you! That finally allows me to clear the history, however I'm not looking forward to sharing this with staff and students. In the past I've created WARNING read-me files for users and placed them in the Application Start menu. Lately, I've relied on physical signs in the labs. I now need to modify my signs to include another application parameter that sounds like a casual view setting, not a security setting. This just gets more complicated each year.

My concern is that malicious students can re-enable "Restore Workspace on Start" and modify web sites. ("Save History" and "Save Passwords" were bad enough.) Many of our students do contracting work and internships. This is a problem when real working web sites are accessed from school computers.

This will be up for discussion.

Are you sharing a single windows user account with multiple users?

-Mat

Are you sharing a single windows user account with multiple users?

-Mat

Yes!! These particular labs provide local login accounts with generic access. These labs do not offer authenticated login for individual users. I have one more question. It appears that version 1.5 does not provide the parameter for "Restore Workspace on Restart". So how do I clear the last used password from version 1.5? The solution above only seems to apply to 2.0.

In version 1.5, checking "Save History" is enough. Uncheck "Save Passwords" as well and press "OK" to make the changes take effect. Now enter the settings again and delete your history entries. This time they will stay deleted when quitting SmartFTP and launching it again.