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Why can I not be kept 'signed in'?

For a number of years now, it has been a real pain having to login every time I come to these forums. Other forums I use have the usual 'keep me logged in' option. Why does it not work that way here? I thought that with the recent format change, that issue would have gone, but no.

 iPhone 4 32Gb 4.3.2,  AppleTV2-OTHER,  iPad 2 64Gb 3G 4.3.2

Posted on May 6, 2011 6:32 AM

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Posted on May 6, 2011 7:28 AM

Once you have logged in you stay logged in until you close Safari or other browser.


We have never been able to log in automatically on the Apple forums - for security reasons.

51 replies

May 6, 2011 7:29 AM in response to igmackenzie

Hi, igmackenzie -


Yep, it is annoying.


The login result is stored in a session-only cookie on the member's machine. As long as the browser is not quit, the member should stay logged in. Quitting the broswer deletes that cookie, and so at their next visit the member must login again.


Years back this was discussed with the Mods who ran the forums. As I recall, their response was that it was done for reasons of security. Apparently there had been some instances where a member's machine had been accessed by someone else, who used the member's account to post drivel of one kind or another in the AD forums. The response was to mandate login for each session, and include a denial of auto-login. It's been that way ever since.


Apparently that concern still exists, and so there's been no change.


Yes, if someone walks away from their machine with the browser still running, anyone walking by can access ASC using the owner's account. Not much can be done about that - there is some burden on each of us to exert reasonable effort to guard our data and accesses. Although no one has physical access to my machines other than myself, I still have a habit of quitting all apps before leaving a machine for a while.

Jul 14, 2011 2:25 AM in response to TildeBee

IIRC, when the new ASC was first launched, just like with the old AD users were logged out when they quit the browser, but not automatically after a period of inactivity. The auto logout behavior appeared after a month or so, around the same time a few other changes were made, like including location info under a user's avatar in replies.


The period of inactivity before auto logout is triggered is not fixed. Usually, it is around 30 minutes but at times it is substantially longer. (For example, on at least one recent occasion, I was surprised to see that I had not been logged out after about 2 hours of inactivity.)


I suspect this variable logout behavior is related to the load placed on the ASC servers by logged in users. Each logged in user requires a certain amount of server-side resources to generate "on-the-fly" things like user-specific lists of new-to-them content, customized home page views, & so on. Supposedly, the site had to be switched to the newer version of the site software because the old version's outdated server management system could not keep up with the sharply increasing use of the site.


So my theory is that the new software purges inactive user sessions from the servers when the load reaches some critical point to prevent them from overloading.

Sep 11, 2011 10:28 AM in response to Klaus1

I know there has never been any automatic logging in here. That is our point! It would be nice for that situation to change, as the current one is a real pain. As I said earlier, this is the only forum - confidential ones aside - that I know of that has this situation.

In my case, you are not correct about remaining logged in until I close Safari. If I am logged in, and move to other sites, after a while I am no longer logged in. If I respond to an email notification from these forums, I find I have to re-login, even if I haven't closed Safari down.

Why can I not be kept 'signed in'?

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