Support Forum

Cookie mis-identifying return visitors

GB Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
Member
Member since Nov 2007
37 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 12:20 pm · Edited

A user of our forum has just reported something that I have experienced myself. USER1 wrote, “Is it just me, or is anyone else getting cryptic greetings on the main page before logging in. Like just this morning, it called me ‘USER2’ (Welcome back … etc.).”

I have had the same experience, where when returning to the site and being no longer logged in because of a login timeout, the site welcomes me back as a different user — one that has never logged into that browser or this computer. The user is a subscriber, non-admin. It seems to be the same user every time.

I have now disabled “Store guest information in a cookie for subsequent visits” in hopes of avoiding the problem.

5 Answers

New Answer
YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 12:36 pm

I am not really sure how that can be possible. A cookie can only be written to the computer the user is actually using and it is sent back to the server by that computer as part of the http request. One user on any website is unaware and strictly partitioned from any other user/. It is just not possible to write a cookie from one users session to another users session…

GB Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
Member
Member since Nov 2007
37 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 12:39 pm

If that’s impossible, then something else is happening. It is indeed greeting a user who isn’t me when I let my login timeout and then relaunch the browser. Feel free to login as a subscriber and see if it does the same for you: http://www.waywordradio.org/discussion/

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 1:56 pm

As expected it just says ‘guest’.

It will hang on to a ‘guest’ cookie for a year. I have one on my machine which I use for testing purposes when I want to visit the forum but not be logged in.

GB Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
Member
Member since Nov 2007
37 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 3:30 pm

So it works for you. Why does mine show another user’s name?

MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member
Member since Dec 2006
19,448 posts
Jul 31, 2012 · 10:47 pm

the cookie would be on that persons computer, not someone else…  have you cleared all your cookies?