Web Browsers AutoComplete Feature - Boon or Bane ?

The AutoComplete feature of web browsers are quite popular . I'm sure its being used by most internet explorer users . It sure is pretty helpful as you dont need to enter the whole website address or you dont need to enter the whole username when logging into say gmail for example . All you need to do is hit the first two or three letters of your username and then your username pops up right below it . Pretty convenient right?

Well although it is indeed very convenient . How about when you access gmail on a public system . Well i guess its no harm even if they come to know your username , no harm done there!! But what if its a credit card number? It is indeed surprising but the autocomplete feature works with credit card numbers as well for most websites . You really dont know who to blame here!!Would you blame mozilla or microsoft for creating such a feature and that too enabling it by default or would you blame the website designer for allowing the autocomplete feature to work with that particular field .

I guess there is a certain sense of security if it is your own machine and you have access to it . But would you still want to risk that by just pressing the down arrow key and having your credit card number inserted into the field automatically???We all know how vulnerable internet explorer!! What is the point of having an online system to book movie tickets,flight tickets etc if the website has a flaw like this!!

So although it is the responsibility of the website designer to make sure that the credit card number field has auto complete off , we still need to do our part and either turn off auto complete or avoid using such websites on public computers!! Entering your credit card details on public computers is a strict NO NO . I try to avoid accessing my email on public computers as well.
I wouldn't turn autocomplete off because i'm so used to it and it definitely makes your browsing experience a whole lot better . I guess its always just better to avoid entering such critical data on public machines . Incase you want to turn off autocomplete you can do so for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox

NOTE: For Website Developers - Remember to set autocomplete off for such fields.