User profile

This article deals with a term from the user management area; for user profiles as websites, see profile page ; for user data in general, see Profiling .

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In system administration, a user profile is a configuration of a user account in an operating system , a computer network or in website processing . These data are managed centrally in a special directory (collection point). The user profile of computers contains the user rights of one or more users and their personal settings.

computer

The user profile can include various rights, e.g. B. Read rights , write rights , connections , installation of programs and delete rights. These rights are assigned by the respective system administrator as part of the user administration and can be changed by any other system administrator. The administrator, on the other hand, “only” has one - privileged - user profile. In order to guarantee data protection, the user profiles of others are generally restricted.

The user's own files and settings are also saved in the user profile. This also includes configuration files for programs.

Particularly sensitive data is often also backed up, such as the root account under Unix or the “protected memory” under Windows . In large networks, the flexibility can be increased by a roaming user profile (freely translated as "freely moving user profile") stored on the server . The user can then use it to access his personal profile on any computer in the network . A prerequisite for this, however, is a software and hardware environment that is as homogeneous as possible with the same software versions. If this is not the case, z. For example, a platform-independent user profile can be used and managed with Citrix Presentation Server , which is not downloaded to a local computer and processed there, but always remains on the server.

User IDs

As a rule, user profiles are protected by a user ID and a password. In order to significantly increase security (especially in the case of endangered or highly privileged profiles), the user ID should also be treated as non-public information. In particular, email addresses and schemes such as firstname.lastname should be avoided. It is recommended to use non-derivable character strings instead or to design a combination of external characteristics with a non-guessable component. In addition, it must be ensured that the application does not provide any information about the existence of user IDs.

Passwords

→ Main article : Password

The use of secure passwords can be achieved in that the user system does not accept every password requested by the user and specifies rules and checks that they are adhered to. In general, passwords made up of simple dictionary words, personal information (name, birthday, etc.) and simple number combinations should be avoided. We recommend a combination of (intentionally misspelled) words, special characters, upper and lower case and numbers. In the case of larger networks, it may also make sense to change the password on a regular basis.

Cellphone

Most mobile phones offer so-called profiles (environments). Depending on the given environmental conditions (aircraft, meeting, vehicle, etc.), the operator can compile settings and activate or deactivate them as required. A fictitious setting “at home” would be, for example, call signaling : on (sub-item melody and vibration alarm: active), ringer volume: 5, increasing volume: off. After switching on, the last used user profile is usually active. Mute is also a user profile.