log in to CS/NS/Prospero forums fails

[davidh]

log in to CS/NS/Prospero forums fails

Fails with IE7 and FF3 on XP SP3

Works with FF2 on Win 98 and Opera 9.52 on XP SP3

Using AIM ID and password.

Going thru Verizon DSL Lite Westel router/DSLmodem

Tried deleting and/or disabling some add-ons in IE7 and FF3 on XP, but no luck.

Started happening about a week or two ago.

When failing browser window is white blank and various URL's flash in browser status bar in what looks like it's going to be an endless loop but then apparently times out and msg (from CS/NS/Prospero) about service unavailable appears with option to try again.

Login with Opera 9.52 on XP SP3 works but is rather unreliable.

Any ideas?

DH

[Dan in Saint Louis]

log in to CS/NS/Prospero forums fails
Noted in that forum whose name must not be said a few days ago. Merzi said it was fixed, but clearly it is not.

It bothers some users but not others. Working fine for me <fingers crossed>.

[Mike]

Any ideas?
Delete all cookies related to AOL and CompuServe and try again. That solved the problem for me!

[davidh]

Delete all cookies related to AOL and CompuServe and try again. That solved the problem for me!
I had already tried that. Tried again, no luck.

Finally checked my Firefox settings and changed them to allow 3rd party cookies and that did the trick.

Assuming the worst, I guess that AOL made the change to load a something like a "web beacon" (cookie) on my PC so they can track my page views, etc.

I assume that they will probably do no additional changes, and that I'm stuck with having to put up with it.

DH

[davidh]

I had already tried that. Tried again, no luck.

Finally checked my Firefox settings and changed them to allow 3rd party cookies and that did the trick.

Assuming the worst, I guess that AOL made the change to load a something like a "web beacon" (cookie) on my PC so they can track my page views, etc.

I assume that they will probably do no additional changes, and that I'm stuck with having to put up with it.

DH
I checked all the cookies that were added during the successful login process and they all were either in the compuserve.com or aol.com domains, so they are not really third party even tho' the browser may think them to be so at a particular moment/particular page during the log in process, if y'all get my drift.
DH

[Mike]

Finally checked my Firefox settings and changed them to allow 3rd party cookies and that did the trick.
I wonder if that occurred at the time when whatever glitch was causing problems got cured.

Simply clearing all the cookies solved the problem for me, but others' problems weren't so easy to resolve.

[davidh]

I wonder if that occurred at the time when whatever glitch was causing problems got cured.

Simply clearing all the cookies solved the problem for me, but others' problems weren't so easy to resolve.

I'm just guessing, but maybe the login process to AOL/AIM/CS/NS is more complicated or rube goldberg-erish than say yahoo for example ?

The reason I say this is that both PIDGIN opersource multiprotocol IM and Trillian multiprotocol IM support opening and logging in to Yahoo web mail mail boxes directly, but for AIM (AOL, CSIM, NSIM) they only open up the AOL/AIM start page and leave it up to the user to log in manually to read web mail.

So I suppose this limitation in the IM logging in to web mail for AOL/AIM would either be a technical or legal limitation.

With PIDGIN I can actually get a glimpse of what happens. PIDGIN apparently generates an html file on the hard disk and passes it off the the default browser to parse. I think there may be some javascript in the generated file but I don't remember for sure if I had to tell my NoScript in Firefox to allow scripts from localhost or whatever.

BTW I lost the ability to log in to CS/NS/Prospero with my first CSIM ID (born circa 98?) for about a year apparently because AOL/CS/NS changed something on their servers. So I would tend to assume that since the whole mess fell together by various accidents of mergers/buyouts, that it might almost by necessity be somewhat of a kludge.

[Mike]

I'm just guessing, but maybe the login process to AOL/AIM/CS/NS is more complicated or rube goldberg-erish than say yahoo for example ?
Most certainly it's more complicated. At least two separate databases for user IDs/passwords exist, and within those databases, there are different types of users and privileges.

[ndebord]

log in to CS/NS/Prospero forums fails

Any ideas?

DH

David,

I no longer login to CIS/Prospero directly. I only come in through an RSS feed to viruscentral and once there log in and get the standard AIM/AOL CIS login screen. Have experienced zero problems this way.


Caveat: The following URL is designed for Aggreg8, a no longer supported RSS reader originally designed for FireFox and SeaMonkey and later adapted for K-Meleon, which is how I use it.


http://acx.prospero.com/dir-app/acx/activeContent.aspx?webtag=ws-viruscentral&fp=39&fmt=rss&count=10&type=discussions

[Dan in Saint Louis]

I no longer login to CIS/Prospero directly. I only come in through an RSS feed to viruscentral and once there log in and get the standard AIM/AOL CIS login screen. Have experienced zero problems this way.This has been the most reliable link for me, and adds the convenience of indexing my favorite forums:
http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=MyForums&webtag=ws-pchardware

[davidh]

PLEASE IGNORE THESE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS. Apparently my testing was faulty. It seems that I STILL have to allow third party cookies and apparently to do so I need to have Firefox allow all cookies not explicitly blocked/blacklisted. Unless I have FF prompt me, yuk.

FWIW, During the process of trying to minimize domains allowed for cookies, for the sake of hoped for increased privacy, by "whitelisting" the domains in Firefox, I have observed the following results under the various conditions mentioned below.

Coming in thru community.compuserve.com/whateverforum with an AIM screenname needs these domains enabled for cookies

aol.com
community.compuserve.com
compuserve.com
login.compuserve.com
member.compuserve.com
my.screenname.aol.com
screenname.aol.com
snlogin.aol.com I have not tried to find out whether this list can be shortened, i.e. whether any of these domains are somewhat superfluous or not.

Coming in thru community.compuserve.com (without forum specified) with AIM screenname, but with above listed domains enabled for cookies, gives this result:

This area can not be accessed by your account.

This usually happens because:

* Membership or Special permissions are required.
* Availability is limited by geographic region.

If you believe that your account should be able to access this area, please contact Customer Service to report the problem.

If you would like to make another selection, click on your browser's back button to return to the previous page. Which is probably to be expected since I am not a member of Compuserve (just an AIM screenname member).

Coming in to community.netscape.com, but with above listed domains enabled for cookies, and then clicking a forum link on that page gives the following result:

Redirect Loop

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.

* Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?
* NOTE: If accepting the site's cookies does not resolve the problem, it is likely a server configuration issue and not your computer.
to be continued, I hope, wrt this "problem"...

BTW, it's fairly easy to do these experiments because Firefox has a "show cookies" button somewhere under Tools | Options ...

[davidh]

Old, related thread:

http://tapcis.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3300

[ndebord]

David,

An easier way to go is Cookie Monster. Allow cookies, save the essential ones and then erase the rest when you exit the browser.

[davidh]

This a.m. with only the following whitelist and all other cookies disabled, I was able to log in ok again. So maybe something changed temporarily last nite so that I could not log in at all either on MS IE or on FF, EVEN WITH ALL COOKIES ENABLED. AIM was flakey last nite too because it could not cough up my buddy list to me, so maybe there was something wrong on the server side.

aol.com
community.compuserve.com
compuserve.com
login.compuserve.com
member.compuserve.com
my.screenname.aol.com
screenname.aol.com
snlogin.aol.com

DH

[davidh]

David,

An easier way to go is Cookie Monster. Allow cookies, save the essential ones and then erase the rest when you exit the browser. I tried FF Cookie Safe extension for a while. Don't know how it compares to Cookie Monster.

I was distracted from evaluating cookie manager extension(s) by the apparent total temporary disappearance of ability to log in to CIS forums last nite.

DH

[ndebord]

I tried FF Cookie Safe extension for a while. Don't know how it compares to Cookie Monster.

I was distracted from evaluating cookie manager extension(s) by the apparent total temporary disappearance of ability to log in to CIS forums last nite.

DH

David,

Cookie Monster is a standalone app. I use it on a hotkey in KM and could, if I wanted to, have it set up to automatically do its thing whenever I close KM (a macro to run it as KM closes and to clear out all but the essential or preserved list of cookies.

[davidh]

David,

Cookie Monster is a standalone app. I use it on a hotkey in KM and could, if I wanted to, have it set up to automatically do its thing whenever I close KM (a macro to run it as KM closes and to clear out all but the essential or preserved list of cookies.

I am using the FF "cookie monster" extension.

A search list of cookie-related FF extensions including "cookie monster":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=cookie&cat=1%2C12

I noticed in the search list that extensions for both * Web Development and * Privacy & Security had more downloads that those just for * Privacy & Security alone.

My tentative conclusion is that the ones (extensions) for * Privacy & Security alone are more user friendly for dummies like me and the ones for both purposes are downloaded MORE because web developers outnumber paranoid dummy civilians like me. Which in my mind vouches for the sorry state of web security at the consumer end (not to mention the developer end, I'm often lately reading about masses of infected servers in the hundreds of thousands lately on ISC).

For me, a possible advantage of the cookie monster extensions AS an extension (as opposed to standalone) is that I can look at the FF privacy options and check up a little bit on what "cookie monster" has done "under the hood of firefox". I haven't used it enough yet to decide whether it's user friendly enuf for me or not wrt managing cookie privacy, etc.

DH

[ndebord]

I am using the FF "cookie monster" extension.

A search list of cookie-related FF extensions including "cookie monster":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=cookie&cat=1%2C12

I noticed in the search list that extensions for both * Web Development and * Privacy & Security had more downloads that those just for * Privacy & Security alone.

My tentative conclusion is that the ones (extensions) for * Privacy & Security alone are more user friendly for dummies like me and the ones for both purposes are downloaded MORE because web developers outnumber paranoid dummy civilians like me. Which in my mind vouches for the sorry state of web security at the consumer end (not to mention the developer end, I'm often lately reading about masses of infected servers in the hundreds of thousands lately on ISC).

For me, a possible advantage of the cookie monster extensions AS an extension (as opposed to standalone) is that I can look at the FF privacy options and check up a little bit on what "cookie monster" has done "under the hood of firefox". I haven't used it enough yet to decide whether it's user friendly enuf for me or not wrt managing cookie privacy, etc.

DH

David,

I have never used the cookie monster extension for FF. I do use the standalone Cookie Monster for K-Meleon all the time and make decisions on the fly as to cookies I want to keep permanently. The rest are deleted whenever I care to as I browse or when I close down the browser.