[Psi-devel] [feat] Privacy for Psi used on public-access computers

[Johann "onn" Bitsoenn]

At current stage of developement, there is an area that Psi does not 
cover well enough. As jabber becomes more and more popular, we must 
realise that it's clients will be used not only at private or 
almost-private workstations with logging and other nice and protective 
stuff, but also on public-access computers (internet cafe's, schools) or 
on other machines, for which there are people unknown to us that have 
same level of access (e.g. collegue's pc).

User may find it inconvinient to use Psi in such places. The main 
problem is roster, which some of us would like to remain private (or so 
would like people who exists on that roster. same as with email, noone 
want's his address to be travelling through net from spammer to 
spammer). But the last known roster is stored by Psi in the config.xml 
file.

There are several features that could be implemented in Psi - we may 
find Firefox 1.1's "sanitize" feature as a good source for some ideas - 
but this singular post is dedicated to the roster problem:



_Feature description_

Client should have an option to turn off storing the roster in 
config.xml file while the user's state is offline.


_Feature implementation hints_

Every time user becomes offline OR every time user shuts down OR 
everytime Psi finds roster items in config while the user is offline, 
Psi should delete that list (if option is on).
Every time users logs onto server, Psi should retrieve the roster (it 
does so anyway to check the changes, so it may likely not affect logging 
code in any way).



It would be very good to get some feedback and ideas from those of you 
who either run such public-access machines or who use their Psi on such 
machines - if you have any other good ideas or notices about a public 
use of Psi client.

Greetings,
Johann "onn" Bitsoenn