Come down and sign in please

July 22, 2005 1:38 PM

I never thought I'd sully AskMe by posting an eBay question, but I have an annoying sign-in problem that eBay can't help with.

Basically it seems that my sign-in privileges expire every 24 hours. I can be browsing away and at the top of the page it will say "Hello, TiredStarling! (sign out)", which would seem to indicate that I'm signed in. If I now go to "My eBay" for example I will get redirected to the sign-in page. Once I've signed in (yes, I do click "Keep me signed in") everything's fine for a day, I can access My eBay, or the Selling pages or other areas of my account without having to sign in. Next day though, I seem to have been signed out again even though the auction pages still say "Hello TiredStarling!"

"Cookies", you will say, and I have trashed every eBay cookie I can find several times. "Cookies," eBay said, and that's all. But it doesn't fix it.

I'm browsing with Safari 1.2 on a Mac PowerBook and iBook running OS10.3.8. Using another browser is not an option.

posted by TiredStarling to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Don't have an answer, but I do have the same problem on my Mac. I haven't tried it on IE or Firefox to see if it's different.

And it is very very annoying.
posted by AaRdVarK at 1:44 PM on July 22, 2005

firefox on a mac does the same thing. *very* annoying. Maybe one of the lurking ebay employees can help here?
posted by menace303 at 1:48 PM on July 22, 2005

This isn't the normal eBay behaviour? I use Mozilla on W2k and WinXP and I always have this problem.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:50 PM on July 22, 2005

I, too, always figured it was normal eBay behavior (Firefox and Opera on Win2k, Firefox on Linux, IE on PocketPC). It seems like it's a fairly recent change, but I can't put my finger on when it happened--maybe it's related to eBay's cozier relationship with PayPal, and thus folks' bank-account information?
posted by box at 1:59 PM on July 22, 2005

I agree, it's a recent change. I'm on a PC and I get it now too. Just figured it was increased security on their part.
posted by GaelFC at 2:00 PM on July 22, 2005

I've noticed this over the past several years. There seems to be various levels of security/authentication on eBay, depending on how secure the area or action must be. One to say hello to you, one to watch items, one to view your "My eBay" page, one to bid, one to view or change personal information, etc. It seems that the less secure the layer is, the longer and more likely it will remember your identity. For some of the very secure areas, you have to sign in, even if you signed in elsewhere on the site minutes ago. Security is a huge concern on eBay, due to the large amount of personal information it holds, and the potential for taking over accounts for scamming or fraud purposes.
posted by zsazsa at 2:05 PM on July 22, 2005

In four years of using eBay, it has *never* saved my login cookie even though every single time I go there I login and check off the "remember me" option. This is across two different operating systems and multiple browsers. I think the 24 hour thing might be a default based on my experience.
posted by mathowie at 2:18 PM on July 22, 2005

I always thought I was the only one too! I'm so happy I'm not alone!
posted by misterbrandt at 3:22 PM on July 22, 2005

This probably isn't your case, but this happens to me with Yahoo when I check my mail from work. This i assume has to do with the built in securitys of our network. Another odd thing, each time I sign in, it takes at least two attempts before it goes through. Damn annoying if you ask me.
posted by retro88 at 3:42 PM on July 22, 2005

Perhaps it's some security setting on your end? (e.g. log-in cookies more than 24 hours old get trashed)
posted by winston at 3:44 PM on July 22, 2005

It never works for me either.
posted by drezdn at 3:53 PM on July 22, 2005

nor I.
posted by russmail at 5:29 PM on July 22, 2005

I have this problem too and have googled to see if anyone has a fix with no luck. Surely someone has a workaround somewhere?
I've even considered emailing ebay to tell them that I visit their site far less than I used to because of the annoyance factor.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:36 AM on July 23, 2005

I started having this problem months ago and actually posted in either the Discussion forums or the Answer Center on eBay. There are many, many users complaining about it, if you search those 2 places, and a theory that it happened when eBay switched from IBM to Sun.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:11 AM on July 24, 2005