Skip to main content
Super User

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

5
  • 1
    I'd say that "just a browser" would not qualify as restricted
    – Hagen von Eitzen
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 15:35
  • Agree with @HagenvonEitzen ! A web browser lets you do much more than you would expect, including accessing files, running programs, executing arbitrary JavaScript (which can use computation resources on the machine to do interesting things, or make web requests to other computers), and so on. You'd need to carefully audit the capabilities of the browser you chose, which is a separate and more complicated problem from the one you're asking about (running a program under a guest account upon logoff/lock screen).
    – allquixotic
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 15:45
  • Thanks for the comments. Let's assume that all good practises will be in place to restrict what the browser can do and what the user can do. Obviously the emphasis of my question was not about restricted use from the security point of view, but restricted from the point of view of available options to the user. Please ignore the fact I used the word restriction. Imagine I said Reduced Set of Affordances instead!
    – Vihung
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 17:17
  • I would just offer a Kiosk mode. There exists software that will handle getting rid of files connected to privacy of the customer ( automatically clear their cookies, ect). Your unlikely to find a solution to automatically switch to this user mode of course. You can also handle this without user and provide a locked down guest account with specific functionality.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 17:40
  • To add to @Ramhound: I'd suggest something like starting a virtual machine that has no access to the host disks. For small kiosk machine images check thinstation.org (though their focus is more on PXE bootable systems)
    – Hagen von Eitzen
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 17:56