Question for Admin/Moderators...

Jim_HiTek · 05-14-2022, 03:33 PM

I have this Winnie forum password 'recorded' in my browser so it auto inserts it when I sign in here on the forum. It worked yesterday, just opened and I was commenting on threads. Today it didn't work at all. I had to ask for a new temp pswd, then reset it. This has happened several times over the years with this site.

It's very annoying. My pswrd is very complex so NO, it wasn't hacked.

In this case, (and this isn't the first time it's happened) this forum's software somehow changed my password. The autofill I have in this browser shows the password correctly and would have entered it correctly when I clicked on your Usr/pswd form page but this site refused to accept it today...not yesterday, but today. How did it change my password without my permission or knowledge? I hope this will be fixed because it appears you have a bug.

Thanks.

**creativepart** · 05-14-2022, 04:32 PM

The only way that I know this could happen is if you changed your password at some other RV Life website or application. All of the RV Life operated web services are set up on one password. For instance, if you change your password at even just one RVL site like irv2.com or campgroundreviews or RVTripWizzard or Fuelly, etc then your password is changed to that new password everywhere and the password set in your browser for this website would no longer be valid.

I know of no other way what you describe could happen.

Jim_HiTek · 05-14-2022, 07:48 PM

Which leads me to believe that there's a bug. Because this time and the other times it's happened, I had NOT changed my password that spans all the sites in your network. I'm aware of that and would change the two involved at the same time like the last time I changed them for security reasons. I did not change the iRV2 password recently. I'm not involved with the other sites. Just iRV2 and this one.

So though I'm an IT pro (retired) and know how to deal with this sort of thing, I'm concerned about amateurs that might not have my background that use this site. Plus it's annoying. Probably more because it's annoying than the other thing (snort).

Just sayin'.

**creativepart** · 05-14-2022, 09:53 PM

Sorry Jim, I have no idea of what might be the problem that causes your issue.

It’s never happened to me here and at this point no one else has reported the problem. But maybe I just don’t know of anyone else who’s experience mirrors yours.

jerichorick · 12-28-2022, 06:05 AM

I have been experiencing a similar problem for a few weeks now.

From my email I click the link.
If I want to post I click the Quote button.
I log in.
I type a message.
I try to Submit reply and I am sent back to the logon screen and loos my post.
My workaround is to go back on screen and copy my post, go back to the email link, back to the thread, log in, select Quote and past my copied reply.
Please have your website management team find and fix this bug. It is very time consuming and removes the fun of being a part of the forum.
Happy New Year,
Rick

P.S. I just tried to use the Quick reply box and I was rejected from sending the post with an error message of some sort of rule error.

When I went to the top of the thread I chose the Post reply button at the left top of thread and got this screen.
When I hit Submit Reply I was directed to the login screen.

This post is a cut and past.

jerichorick · 12-28-2022, 06:15 AM

I have been experiencing a similar problem for a few weeks now.

From my email I click the link.
If I want to post I click the Quote button.
I log in.
I type a message.
I try to Submit reply and I am sent back to the logon screen and loos my post.
My workaround is to go back on screen and copy my post, go back to the email link, back to the thread, log in, select Quote and past my copied reply.
Please have your website management team find and fix this bug. It is very time consuming and removes the fun of being a part of the forum.
Happy New Year,
Rick

P.S. I just tried to use the Quick reply box and I was rejected from sending the post with an error message of some sort of rule error.

When I went to the top of the thread I chose the Post reply button at the left top of thread and got this screen.
When I hit Submit Reply I was directed to the login screen.

This post is a cut and past. (I did a ctrl a to select my post, ctrl c to copy it and Submit Reply. This time it went without having to log in again. I'm hoping the edit works the same.)
I can not save this edit without refreshing the page and logging back in! Most frustrating.

After I refreshed my browser and logged back in I saw the above post had published. This is a followup to what I have been experiencing trying to get the previous post to publish. I am now about the hit Submit Reply.

jerichorick · 12-28-2022, 06:19 AM

I was required to go to the top of the thread to post, log back in and past the following:

It worked this time. I am now on Post Quick Reply window.

1. You do not have permission to perform this action. Please refresh the page and login before trying again.

**macnut** · 01-03-2023, 05:01 PM

This is happening to me a lot too, on both iPhone and iPad. I wondering if timeout parameters were changed?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerichorick

I have been experiencing a similar problem for a few weeks now.

From my email I click the link.
If I want to post I click the Quote button.
I log in.
I type a message.
I try to Submit reply and I am sent back to the logon screen and loos my post.
My workaround is to go back on screen and copy my post, go back to the email link, back to the thread, log in, select Quote and past my copied reply.
Please have your website management team find and fix this bug. It is very time consuming and removes the fun of being a part of the forum.
Happy New Year,
Rick

P.S. I just tried to use the Quick reply box and I was rejected from sending the post with an error message of some sort of rule error.

When I went to the top of the thread I chose the Post reply button at the left top of thread and got this screen.
When I hit Submit Reply I was directed to the login screen.

This post is a cut and past. (I did a ctrl a to select my post, ctrl c to copy it and Submit Reply. This time it went without having to log in again. I'm hoping the edit works the same.)
I can not save this edit without refreshing the page and logging back in! Most frustrating.

After I refreshed my browser and logged back in I saw the above post had published. This is a followup to what I have been experiencing trying to get the previous post to publish. I am now about the hit Submit Reply.

**creativepart** · 01-03-2023, 05:24 PM

Janet will have to get to the bottom of this.

As you know, I ran a number of large websites like this with 10 times the number of members and 7 milliono posts. It seemed that, at one time or another, there were always a group of people that were having issues like this.

The cause many times turned out to be some totally non-related change that a person made to their browser's security settings or to computer security settings. In this case their browser couldn't save login cookies properly.

The main other typical reason this happens is when a browser has corrupted domain session cookies. So, every time you visit, the login cookies are incorrect and the server here can't tell if you are logged in or not. When that's the case deleting 100% of the associated browser cookies for the entire domain family (winnieowners, rvlife and any other rvlife domain) need to be deleted so new cookies can be set.

However, Social Knowledge, the company behind this site and RVLife has created very unique software that lets members visit any RVLife domain without reregistering. This is 100% custom and I'm not privy to the inner workings of this software.

P.S I only mentioned the other reasons in case this helps you folks get to the bottom of the issue.

Morich · 01-03-2023, 06:53 PM

First I would verify that I DO NOT know much about the computer program, etc. once it reaches any of that equipment.
But I was involved with lots of the stuff that carries all that data from one point to another and I might throw in a theory that "could" cause something like this.
The internet is often thought of as a simple thing where I put stuff in, it goes over a line and comes out on the other folks equipment. Just three parts, Mine, yours, and in between?
Except that there are hundreds or thousands of different parts to that in between!

When we have three totally different users spread all across the country and they have weird glitches in what they are doing, it may be that in between stuff and nobody will ever know, becasue there are thousands of points where multiple routes may feed across the country and there are tech folks working on those million miles of "stuff" all the time, day and night.
When I send data from my house in the suburbs of Austin to somebody in Austin, it goes through a minimum of a hundred different potential trouble spots and certainly owned by several different companies. The routing on much of it will be automatic and nobody really knows how a message goes from one place to another on any given day, so we may run into trouble thirty times in a row and never again!

When we drive Austin to Dallas there are maybe two hundreds way to get there, if we don't always take the shortest route but if we send a message, there available routes are probably in the millions.

So I'm not inclined to get too excited if things get funky for a few days as I'm surprised it works at all.
That means Creative or Janet might need to consider if it seems logical for them to chase the problem but it is also logical for them to never find or fix a problem as it may not even be in their end of the country!

I wish it were simple but it is not!

**Eagle5** · 01-03-2023, 08:18 PM

I never have any issues. I am using a very old Browser called SeaMonkey:
https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
It is the privately-maintained modern version of Netscape.
Just before I shut-down my computer for the session, I always run CCleaner:
https://www.ccleaner.com/
It removes all old cookies and unneeded temporary files.

wyocamper · 01-03-2023, 09:44 PM

I have my username/password saved in Firefox and haven't seen this issue at all. Occasionally I'll find that I've been logged out, but I have always been able to log back in with my saved credentials.

Wayne M · 01-03-2023, 10:02 PM

I use a password program and in the past I have had the problem when I changed a password in one site and then tried to access the other site (RVL sites) and had to figure out that all the RVL sites were changing.

As a retired IT Security Specialist from a Govt Agency I personally think this is a dangerous practice, not knowing how their software is working, Shoutd the RVL server be hacked and the passwords stolen it is going to cause a lot of problems across the RVL web sites.

I have many, many, many passwords and although I have them in a password manager external to the browser. I can tell you 90% of them from the top of my head using and algorithm that is easy to remember and use.

I highly recommend a password manager for those who have many passwords. I go back 40 years of web access using PW's.

Jim_HiTek · 01-04-2023, 12:12 AM

I'm the author of this thread and I've come back to mention that the issue had gone away for my systems around a month after initially posting. It's no longer repeatedly asking for verification of my password. I'm pretty careful so as not to change much in the way of configuration during an attempt at problem resolution so it was a couple months later that I cleaned out cookies and what not. So whatever was causing the problem in my case wasn't related to that, I don't believe.

Whatever it was hasn't returned this time and it's been 8 months now so I suspect that it's resolved. I guess I'll see in time.

**Janet H** · 01-11-2023, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim_HiTek

Whatever it was hasn't returned this time and it's been 8 months now so I suspect that it's resolved. I guess I'll see in time.

Just circling back on this... I'm glad it's resolved.

As an informational bit... The site uses cookies to keep you logged in at page changes as you navigate around the site.

Often a browser update or update to your security scheme will change settings, purging cookies as you leave a page or click a button.

To stay logged on on the site you need to allow cookie exchange with the site (or set your security level to medium and click "remember me" as you login".

jerichorick · 01-12-2023, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janet H

Just circling back on this... I'm glad it's resolved.

As an informational bit... The site uses cookies to keep you logged in at page changes as you navigate around the site.

Often a browser update or update to your security scheme will change settings, purging cookies as you leave a page or click a button.

To stay logged on on the site you need to allow cookie exchange with the site (or set your security level to medium and click "remember me" as you login".

This is a test message. I had my location blocked for the site. I fixed that. I don't know why the site would require my location???

I just went to another tab to see if I interrupted this post. Here it goes!
Rick

It posted fine. I guess this was the fix. Thanks all!

**Janet H** · 01-12-2023, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerichorick

This is a test message. I had my location blocked for the site. I fixed that. I don't know why the site would require my location???

The site should work with location services blocked. We ask to know your location for a very specific reason which you can read about here: https://www.winnieowners.com/forums/...ng-364048.html

Since the site is used by rvers and our sister site is Campground Reviews, we hope to encourage folks to leave reviews for parks they may be staying in. You can disable this however if desired.

Vinnie2018 · 06-18-2023, 03:01 PM

I had the same thing happen today. I haven't been logged in since January and my saved password (which I have not changed) has become "wrong password." In addition to this "bug" I have spent the past thirty-five minutes trying to prove that I am not a robot. This site has some glitches and I hope someone who knows how to fix this will get to work on it. Thank you for your post, as I am glad to at least know I am not alone in this.

**creativepart** · 06-18-2023, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinnie2018

Thank you for your post, as I am glad to at least know I am not alone in this.

The thread is over a year old - and there is no issue that anyone else is reporting at this time.

So, while I'm sure you are correct and that your password didn't work and you had trouble proving you were not a robot, there is no issue to fix at this time. We'll keep an eye out for any other reports.

Just glad you were able to login now. That's the important thing.

Jim_HiTek · 06-18-2023, 03:34 PM

That reminds me, and I agree with Vinnie2018. I have vision problems and I absolutely HATE those multi-picture Captcha tests. They just drive me nuts, mainly because I can't make out the pictures! Even on a 24" HD monitor, and zooming in. It seems that they don't consider or accommodate people with vision problems.

And the worst part is some sites have page after page of them. Sometimes 3 pages of silly pictures deep. Terrible. IF neither of my BANKS don't need a Captcha test for me to access their site and my accounts, why does an RV forum? One bank has 2 step the other only needs my password and username. And if I get one wrong, then it has a 'we'll send you a reset password link' setup.

I understand the need for security, but please drop those terrible Captchas. Keep in mind that many of this site and iRV2 readers are older & retired and may also have vision issues.

Maybe go to 3 way verification. Text, phone, and security question available if you don't mind. Only one needed to verify the person though. Otherwise THAT becomes annoying too. But please get rid of Captcha.

>End Rant<