Sorry, but I’ll skip.
I noticed that the cookie (which I believe has the limit for when the forum checks the credentials again & does the redirecting) might not get updated even if you load/open pages in the forum. Which means that every 1 hour the credentials are checked and you’re redirected away from topic pages to the main page.
I say this because just now when I got back to reply to Asyn’s post, I was redirected although I visited the forum just few minutes ago.
Anyways, how ever the system may work, I suggest that the people responsible update the system so that links from e.g. emails, bookmarks, or page refreshes do go to the page intended, not to main page. Thank you.
Could you please add a sig…!?
Huh? ???
A signature, so we can see what HW/SW you use.
Well, I had a signature once, then when I came back to this forum after a while, I noticed that the info was way outdated, so I removed it. I don’t see a point keeping a sig if the info is most of the time incorrect, and I’m not keen on the idea to update it regularly. If a post I make here requires any HW/SW info, I’ll add it to that post/topic. This topic/post doesn’t need any HW/SW info. /offtopic
More personal testing.
Just when I came to answer Asyn, I was again redirected. After I posted the above reply I looked at the cookies. This cookie seems to be the one that activates the credentials lookup & redirection when it’s expired:
forumavastcom
It’s set to expire 1. July 2014 18:05:24 (seems to be exactly 1 hour after I came to post my previous message)
This cookie expire date/time doesn’t change whatever page I load here in forum (EDIT: and it doesn’t get updated even after a new post is made). So it’s really like I guessed couple of messages back, the time limit is 1 hour for the cookie and when it expires, the credentials are checked and you’re redirected away from topic pages to the main page.
I’ll try to remember to refresh this page at around 18:00, and again 18:10 and see what happens on both times. I’ll be back.
- Shouldn’t be too hard to update it once in a while.
- So, please add it here.
I don’t use the email notifications of new replies to posts, etc. I just use the ‘Show new replies to your posts.’ and ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’ links at the top of the page. So I don’t experience that, however, as I mentioned in a previous post, that on occasion clicking the ‘Show new replies to your posts.’ or ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’ it redirects to index.php, but this doesn’t happen all of the time.
Just like I expected. On 18:00 a page refresh to this page does just that, refreshes the page. On 18:10 page refresh redirects to main page. And the “forumavastcom” is now set to expire on: 1. July 2014 19:10:12.
Ok, now the mechanism what causes this annoyance is pretty much solved.
I urge others to test too. 1 hour (+5 minutes to be sure) without reading this forum can’t be that difficult. Go out and jog, or watch a movie.
Could somebody from Avast fix this please? Thank you. (Or do I’ve to start playing with stored cookies to avoid this issue?)
- Ermm, great.
- Good luck.
- Still don’t see what has to be fixed here…!? After an hour of inactivity you can expect such a result, imo.
Jesus christ you people here. I’ve been on many many, many different forums and this forum is the ONLY ONE that has this stupidity. Most probably because on other forums they don’t rely on external authentication systems.
Asyn, I went through your posts to this topic and here’s what I found out:
- You don’t want to even test this annoyance.
- You engage in off-topic discussion.
- You’re borderline flaming/trolling.
It’s obvious that your way of using this forum you either A) never see this annoyance B) you just don’t care. That’s fine and dandy…
…But others care AND have this annoyance. So please, could you have the decency to respect other users wishes and stop posting irrelevant messages here? Thank you very much.
No problem at all, I’m out.
Edit: After rereading the thread, I can’t see which of my msgs were irrelevant, though. 
OK, I stayed off-line for some time and left some open topics and also left the ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’
Refreshing the topics I left open, didn’t cause a refresh to the index.php.
Refreshing the ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’ query results in a refresh to the index.php.
But this isn’t the way I use the forum so in general I don’t often come across this issue. Not so much for it to be a real hassle.
I've been on many many, many different forums and this forum is the ONLY ONE that has this stupidity. Most probably because on other forums they don't rely on external authentication systems.
Well you only need cast your mind back a few weeks to the fact the forum got hacked and was off line for a couple of weeks to investigate how to better protect the forum/user information. This external authentication was one of the measures to prevent this information being stolen (not on the forum server).
So for whatever reason if the forums were hacked this kind of information wouldn’t be available for harvesting.
Ok, “some time”, though really unspecific, seemed to be enough since at least once it did happen.
BUT, how did you test those 2 cases? Did it go like this?
- You left some open topics and also left the ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’
- You waited some time.
- You refreshed the ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’ query results in a refresh to the index.php.
- Immediately after the previous step (within 1h), you refreshed the topics you left open, didn’t cause a refresh to the index.php.
Is this how you tested? If yes, you missed this: “NOTE! After you’ve refreshed one tab, the second (or 3rd, 4th…) tab when refreshed stays on the current page (which is expected).” I guess that’s what happened. You can only test 1 page/topic at a time, then, to test another page/topic, you have to wait another 1+ hour (or kill the cookie).
And? I fully understand what you’re saying, but the ext. auth. security aspect doesn’t really relate to this forum annoyance. I’ve done my share of web developing and I can say for sure (even though I don’t know the inner workings of the system) that this annoyance could be coded differently, i.e. redirecting users to the page they were on after the authentication is done.
And besides, for all I care, from personal point of view, let forums get hacked, ok, it’s an annoyance, but nothing else to me, I don’t condone it no, but I’m not that dumb to e.g. use the same passwords for different sites/services. And for somebody gleaning my email address? Well, if you operate in internet, it’s a lost cause anyways, it’s going to go to a lot of “lists” even if you are really conservative about where you do put it in. Different emails for every need? No thanks, it’s not possible. My 2c.
I can confirm,
~!Donovan
Thanks !Donovan.
Minor addition, it’s both “forumavastcom” and “PHPSESSID” cookies that affects the 1h limit. If you delete “forumavastcom”, pages still refresh normally (within that 1h), but if you delete “PHPSESSID” cookie (no need to delete other cookie), the redirecting happens… and it’s pretty obvious why to the people who know about PHP and sessions. Anyways, this is just minor addition… useful for those who wants to test this with deleting cookies instead of waiting the 1+ hours. 
EDIT: This PHP session thing made me realize that it could be the PHP session that is to blame, when a new session is created, it could be that after that happens, a redirect to main page is coded to happen. (this is the annoying part of blackbox testing, there’s so many possibilities)
@ Skakara
My previous test was conducted in line with your setting, I waited well in excess of an hour but I didn’t specifically time it.
Yes, that much was established already since the redirecting happened at least once. But that’s not what I asked. I wanted to know whether you did the following steps right after another, and in this order:
- You refreshed the ‘Show unread posts since last visit.’ query results in a refresh to the index.php.
- Immediately after the previous step (within 1h), you refreshed the topics you left open, didn’t cause a refresh to the index.php.
If you did, then your results are normal. Because the cookie/session gets updated when the first redirection happened in step 3. That’s why in step 4 the redirection didn’t happen.
I just white-hat hacked my way around the 1h limit. I changed the expire date of the “forumavastcom” cookie. I added 1 year more so that it expires on July 2015. Most probably doesn’t last to that date, the server session probably isn’t that long. Well, anyways, I proved that the “forumavastcom” cookie has some part in this. More permanent AND proper solution would be nice from Avast team.