Your session and signing out
ITS keeps you signed in only while you are using it. This page explains what happens when you stop, and how to leave the portal safely.
The inactivity limit
If you do not touch the portal for 30 minutes, it signs you out. Your installation may use a different limit.
"Touching" the portal means any of these in an ITS tab: moving the mouse, clicking, pressing a key, scrolling, or touching the screen. Reading a page without moving anything does not count.
The limit is shared across tabs. Working in one ITS tab keeps every other ITS tab alive, and a sign-out in one signs you out of all of them.
The warning, two minutes before
Two minutes before the limit, a box appears in the middle of the screen:
Still there?
You have not used this console for a while. For security you will be signed out in 1:59, and any unsaved work on this page will be lost.
The time counts down every second. Two buttons sit under it:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stay signed in | Closes the box and restarts the clock. Nothing is lost |
| Sign out now | Ends the session at once and returns you to the landing page |
Once the box is showing, you have to answer it. Moving the mouse does not dismiss it, and neither does Esc or a click on the page behind it. This is deliberate: a box that vanished when you brushed the mouse would never tell you that your session had nearly ended.
A screenshot of this box cannot be captured on demand, because it only appears after a long idle period, so the wording above is quoted from the portal rather than pictured.
When the time runs out
If nobody answers before the countdown reaches zero, ITS ends your session, both in the portal and in the ITS sign-in service, and returns you to the public landing page. Anything you had typed but not saved on that page is gone.
If you come back to a laptop that was closed for longer than the limit, the session ends the moment the tab is visible again.
Sign out
- Select your name at the right of the header.
- Select Sign out.
ITS ends your session in the portal and in the sign-in service, and returns you to the public landing page. The next person to use the computer has to sign in with their own account.
Sign out whenever you leave a computer that other people use: an office at a border post, a shared laptop, a training room.
Officers at a border post often share a computer. The header shows the name of the account that is signed in; look at it before you start. If it is not yours, sign out and sign in again.
Other things that end a session
| What happens | Why |
|---|---|
| You are back on the landing page after a long break, without a warning | The sign-in service's own session ran out while the tab was in the background. Sign in again |
| You are back on the landing page in every tab at once | You, or the timeout, signed out in one of the tabs |
| You close the browser | The session may survive in the sign-in service. On a shared computer, sign out first |