“You must close your browser to complete the sign out process”

Question

When logging out of SharePoint I get the following message:

Sign Out: Close Browser To Complete Sign Out.

You must close your browser to complete the sign out process.

Why is it necessary to close the browser? And, is it possible to remove this requirement for closing the browser?

Answer 1

It (depending on browser differences) shouldnt be necesarry to close the window.

Whats going on behind the scenes is calling a client side script

document.execCommand(ClearAuthenticationCache, false)

This client code flushes the in-memory cache of the browser.

The reason this is necesarry is that clearing any cookies wont force the browser to re-authenticate, it will just use the given credentials and log in again.

If you dont close the browser, sometimes (depending on browser, and browser cache settings) you might experience that you see pages from the previously logged in user.

Answer 2

To my knowledge, closing the browser "completes" the sign out process by expiring any cookies that remain from your logged in session.

By this point you area actually logged out from the system, it seems to be more of a formality and extra security precaution.

I'm not sure if Microsoft support programmatic changes to the way this works.