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Secure your Mac: Disable automatic login

by Scott McNulty Oct 9th 2007 at 4:00PM

Most doors have locks on them. Shocking, I know, but they are there for a good reason: to keep people out. It would be nice if we all lived in a Norman Rockwellian world where our doors would never be locked and we would all be busy painting self portraits, but that's not the world we live in.

Sadly, in our world your Mac might get stolen. When this happens bad guys have the potential to get their hands on lots of your information. One easy way to thwart them is by disabling automatic login for all accounts on your Mac. This means that when your Mac boots up you will be prompted by a dialog asking for a password (at the very least, you can change the settings on this dialog, but that is a matter for a follow up post). Not the most comprehensive way to Secure your Mac, but it is a start.

Read on to learn how to do this.
This is actually very easy to do:

  1. Launch System Presences.
  2. Click on 'Security,' which will offer up a wealth of options available to you. We are only interested in one at the moment.
  3. Click the checkbox labeled 'Disable automatic login,' which is under 'For all accounts on this computer.'
  4. There is no step 4!
Keep in mind that this, as the name suggests, disables the automatic login option for all users on your Mac, which is a good thing in my opinion. You should also be aware that you need to have administrative privileges on the Mac to enable this option.

Sure, it is a little inconvenient to have to enter your password after booting up your Mac, but really how often do you have to reboot?

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Most doors have locks on them. Shocking, I know, but they are there for a good reason: to keep people out. It would be nice if we all lived...
 

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17 Comments

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iman

i disabled automatic login a couple of days ago but now i dont want it to ask for a password everytime i login, is there a way i could enable it?
thanks in advance

October 14 2007 at 11:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rmpowell77

What about booting up your macbook pro in harddrive slave mode? Doesn't that completely bypass the security also?

October 10 2007 at 2:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yo!

Maybe a look at http://www.nsa.gov/snac/downloads_macX.cfm will help you getting more secure

(Pre-Tiger :-(

October 10 2007 at 4:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matthew Echert

@11 oh, nice. Thanks. :) I turned off automatic log-in in the Accounts pane, so I never saw that option and obviously didn't look at the graphic that closely.

October 10 2007 at 1:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sumsa

Well, I´d rather create a managed account called "guest" or something, with nearly everything disabled and NO Password.
Why? Because if anyone logs into that account a login script gets executed which tries to report the IP to me! (And I´m working on it sending me an isight snapshot too)
And as others stated above - there is no real security unless we´re talking about encrypted files like the Keychain or encrypted DMGs (eg File Vault).

October 10 2007 at 1:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mustgroove

What about single user mode, which allows people to bypass the login password without the need for the install disc?

October 10 2007 at 12:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Quine

Matthew, look at the checkbox directly above the highlighted one. :)

October 10 2007 at 12:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matthew Echert

This also really only does you any good if somebody steals your Mac while it is shut down. I guess you could put on a password-protected screensaver, but is there any way to make the computer lock when you put it to sleep? I almost never shut down my laptop.

October 09 2007 at 11:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

@7

I live in Canada. I lock my doors.

October 09 2007 at 10:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
abaronofsky@comcast.net

I set my Macbook to require a password at login a while back.

I tried to undo the setting a few weeks ago, but it still requires a password when I log in.

Weird.

October 09 2007 at 7:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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