Patent ID: 7945588

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a read unit to read unique information from a medium inserted into said image forming apparatus; a first storing unit to store said unique information of said medium in a first storage area; a first determination unit to determine whether or not said unique information of said medium is stored in said first storage area when a user has logged in to said image forming apparatus and said medium is inserted into said image forming apparatus; a second storing unit to store identification information of said medium, which is obtained from said unique information of said medium, in a second storage area while bringing said identification information into correspondence with information about the user who has logged in to said image information apparatus, in response to a result of the determination by said first determination unit; a second determination unit to determine whether or not said identification information of said medium is stored in said second storage area while being brought into correspondence with the information about said user who has logged in to said image forming apparatus, when said first determination unit determines that said unique information of said medium is stored in said first storage area; and a control unit to control permission/prohibition of use of a function requiring access to said medium among functions of said image forming apparatus, in response to a result of the determination by said second determination unit, said control unit prohibits a user different from said user brought into correspondence with said identification information of said medium from using the function requiring the access to said medium among the functions of said image forming apparatus, in a case where said second determination unit determines that said identification information of said medium is stored in said second storage area while being brought into correspondence with the information about said user who has logged in to said image forming apparatus.