Guest Account - 10.5 Leopard

Big news here. The Guest account will now delete all files upon logout, and provide for a clean account for each use. To quote Apple Technical Note 15600:

  • If you want others to be able to temporarily use your computer and you don’t want to create a user account for each user, you can create a guest account.
  • When a guest account has been created a guest may log in to the computer without a password. When the log in window is appears the user can just click Guest Account, if names are listed, or type “guest” for the name.
  • You can use parental controls to manage a guest account, for example you can limit the applications a guest user has access to or filter Internet content.
  • A guest user cannot change other accounts or alter the settings on the computer. The guest account cannot be used to log in remotely.
  • Important: Files created while using a guest account are deleted when the user logs out. A temporary home folder is created for the guest’s files. When the they log out, the home folder and it’s contents are deleted.

This is a problem for us. All normal file recovery actions apply of course, but the amount of work to be done for a Guest account is tremendous comparatively.