Mobile issue: Log In fails

I’m having a recurring issue getting/staying logged in to the site. I’m not sure if it’s a phone malfunction or not, although it appears to be device-related.

When I bring up BoingBoing on my phone, I find myself logged off. Repeated attempts to log in fail. I can fix the problem if I go into my browser’s cookies and delete any I see that are from boingboing.net. Then I can access my account on the site, until I navigate away and come back. Then I’m locked out again, until I delete cookies… lather, rinse, repeat.

I am not experiencing this problem on my Kindle Fire, which is why I’m thinking it’s some sort of device glitch. Neither my browser nor my adblocker have been updated lately, so I don’t think it’s related.

Any ideas? Maybe I need to tweak a setting for a permanent fix?

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I should check but I have been using the discourse app for quite awhile now.

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There’s an app? Sounds like I need to check that out.

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yep. and it works for me with chrome on android.

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Still coming up from time to time with stock Samsung browser, even when I leave a BBS window open. After a while, I get logged out again, have to clear cookies…

Looks like the Discourse browser’s a Chrome mod. I haven’t decided if I’m going to grab it or not. I’m experimenting with the Dolphin browser to see if it behaves the same. That should help me get a better idea of what’s going on.

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What browser are you using? Technically we only support the default browser on each device, Chrome for Android and Mobile Safari for iOS.

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I use the Samsung Internet browser ver. 5.4.02.3, with Adguard Content Blocker enabled. (Disabling it hasn’t helped yet.) It’s almost certainly some quirk in the way the cookies are being handled, though no other saved passwords sites I visit have been affected. But my phone is so old and cranky and loaded with data, who knows. It doesn’t look like anyone else is having this issue.

I highly highly recommend Google Chrome, latest version installed from the Android Play Store.

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Point taken. Though I’ve managed to isolate the problem to one single cookie. Deleting it and refreshing the page restores my login. I don’t know enough to trace it further yet, and Google has been less than helpful.

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Followup: after uninstalling a couple of apps I never use anymore, and an update to Samsung’s browser, the problem has disappeared… so far.

Eventually I might switch browsers, but I’m happy with this one and the Adblock I’m using works amazingly well… so I’m reluctant to give it up.

Does this also send nearly anything you type and then dismiss to the server?

I am unclear on what you mean. Does it send prematurely, or lose your message?


@Nightflyer - thanks for asking after and finding the answer to a question I too have had for a while now about mobile log-ins


@TobinL App? Thanks!

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About everything you type in a comment field gets send to the server while you edit your message. I checked this after Cory published an article about Facebook doing something similar for a subset of their customer, condemning this practice. Back then this was done unencrypted via HTTP, I guess nowadays HTTPS is being enforced.

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Drafts are saved periodically to the server in Discourse once you type enough. You can turn off your phone in mid-post (or for more dramatic purposes, smash it to bits!) then boot up your desktop / laptop / tablet, navigate to the topic you were replying to and … continue composing your reply as if nothing happened.

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Oh, I understand the reason behind it and for short postings, I do not mind and compose them entirely in the browser. Longer ones I usually write in an external editor which syncs encrypted across my devices. Back in the days I even set my Usenet posts to midnight, though of course any interested party could use the thread to pinpoint a rough time or even reconstruct a more exact time from the message ids, as at least two servers I used created those based on epoch.

I found it hilarious that Cory condemned something that BoingBoing does

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Oh wow, good question man. Thanks for sayin’

as long as you aren’t ‘Disappointed’! :wink:

I have very clear exceptions from Cory’s articles about tech, be it DRM or social media. So I’m rarely disappointed in them.

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I appreciate that, and very much understand.

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