O Board, Y U no remember me?

About This Message Board
1

These two things have been happening to me on the boards for the last three or four days. I keep looking to see if someone else has noticed the second and is complaining about it, but maybe it’s just me?

  1. Boards are marked ‘Not Secure’ in chrome. HTTPS certificate expired perhaps?
  2. I’m constantly being logged out. Time was I could hit the ‘remember me’ button and I’d stay logged in forever. Now it seems to be timing me out about every hour (or so)

What’s changed?

ETA: In a fit of supreme irony, the board logged me out while I was posting this…

2

And you paid your dues.

It ain’t right!

3

I’ll give you a reference.

4

That’s very brave of you. Foolishly brave, even…

5

Use firefox; chrome sucks.

6

What’s the difference?

(Sidenote - right now my little ‘secure’ padlock is back in action, and I didn’t get logged out while I was AFK a few hours. So either the hamsters have been hard at work, or it’s one of these observer-effect things…)

7

I’ve been logged out frequently too. That may just be TPTB giving me a subtle hint.

8

I typically use Chrome and have never gotten logged out of the SDMB.

It does say “not secure”—something about the SDMB using the old http instead of https protocol?

9

I’m having neither of these issues in Chrome, FWIW.

10

I’m running Mozilla Firefox but I don’t have any of these problems. The certificate is good until January 10, 2020. I booted up Google Chrome to test, and noticed that entering “boards.straightdope.com” does not automatically use the HTTPS protocol. Explicitly typing “https://boards.straightdope.com” resolved that issue.

I recommend you make a bookmark for “https://boards.straightdope.com”. That way if you begin to type, it will auto-fill the full HTTPS URL.

~Max

11

Ah, that makes sense.

But how much does it matter?

12

Make sure your bookmarks (or whatever gets you here) has the https at the front of it. Using boards.straightdope.com alone might not be enough, depending on your browser.

The typical symptoms of using http instead of https are frequently getting logged out and having the theme switch back to the default but often-hated Sultanstheme.

13

For one, it’s the difference between sending a password over an encrypted or unencrypted channel. Plus the other symptoms engineer_comp_geek mentioned.

~Max

14

Yes. Chrome has turned into a spyware repository.

15

Meh. AdBlock Plus and no surfing via phone.

16

And a pay wall.

17

Sometimes I hit a pay wall, sometimes I don’t.

My previous post was in reference to this:

18

The way I get to the boards is by typing ‘boa’ and then it’s the first link. I probably never specified which protocol in my life, and Chrome is curiously reluctant to divulge this information to me, but I did finally twist its arm enough to admit that - yes, that method is defaulting to https. Also, the current tab has been continuously open in my browser for about a month, so I don’t think that was the problem! But the auto-logout has stopped at the exact same time that my machine has decided the dope’s certificate IS right after all, so that’s indicative of…something.

I don’t give too much of a crap about the Borg targetting ads at me, and they’re welcome to deduce I’m a lefty mature-age-student who’s interested in science and music, for what good they can get out of it. Also … lazy :wink:

19

I have no problem with the Sultan.

20

Well son-of-a-gun you’re right. A while back, the SDMB forced me off of my old computer by refusing to connect with http, but it’s back again.