Look, I'm either logged in or NOT... ENOUGH with this half-assed shit!

Dear Ebay, Godaddy, Tivo, & Miscellaneous other websites:

I appreciate security.

I also appreciate you tracking me and knowing it’s me and logging me in so I don’t have to do so every time.

But, well, do you think you could try to either do it completely, or maybe abandon the idea altogether? Because I gotta tell ya, I’m FUCKING SICK OF THIS SHIT.

I don’t understand the point, really… do you just like saying “Hi Stoid! We know it’s you! Look how bitchen we are! We can put cookies on your computer and do other mysterious things that keep us aware of the fact that it’s you! We feel SO good about ourselves, you have no idea!”

Because we both know that you don’t really trust your fancy tracking at all, do you? Because if I actually want to bid on an auction or review my server accounts you’ll suddenly find yourself feeling very unsure of yourself, won’t you? You’ll suddenly stop me in the middle of what I’m doing and toss me into a new, unexpected page and make me fill in my passwords to prove it, won’t you?

Or maybe, if you’re Tivo, you won’t ask me to re-login, you’ll just assume I’m now watching television in New York from my living room in California, judging from the time on the listings.

Let me tell you something: IT’S FUCKING ANNOYING.

So either go all the way with it, and trust your stupid tracking, or don’t, and make me enter my password every time, I’m fine with that. I’d RATHER - I can set it up to be entered automatically the minute I go to your website, I do it on other websites all the time. But having everything stop and change while you double check SUCKS.

Thanks.

Banks and insurers and shit have an option for “this is a private computer. remember me” versus a public computer. This is slightly different from what you’re talking about I think (at least for eBay, the only one I’ve used), but similar. As far as I can tell this does nothing, as the option is reset next time I have to log in.

On some sites I use a different browser just because they seem to work better. Tried that?

My bank site has a timer for inactivity. I don’t mind as I do not want it up and running if I happened to forget to close it while I mess around in Quicken.

Never been bugged by Google, Ebay, or any site that I was at unless there was a timer or an ‘no activity’ timer like my bank.

Servers I can not comment on not places like GoDaddy but with the complexity of one I would think that you might find a few internal places that did not know you were coming.

Can make an auto password app? Make a generic one and put it on a hot key.

Bob’s yer uncle.