password question

[wpshooter]

Why is it that on rare occassions, that my passwords seem to get lost by Linux ?

For instance, I have some shooting forums that I go to quite often and for days and sometimes weeks and months, I can go to those sites and my passwords are automatically retained for me and I go to the site without having to re-enter the password and sometimes then just out of the blue, I am prompted for the password, have do nothing to my knowledge to get rid of the passwords

I don't think this has anything to do with settings in Firefox because the history setting there is set to RETAIN the passwords not to purge them upon close of Firefox browser.

Is this behavior possibly related to the installation of OS updates ?

Thanks.

[catweazel]

Why is it that on rare occassions, that my passwords seem to get lost by Linux ?

Linux isn't losing them. Sites use cookies. Cookies sometimes expire.

[wpshooter]

Why is it that on rare occassions, that my passwords seem to get lost by Linux ?

Linux isn't losing them. Sites use cookies. Cookies sometimes expire.

If these include "login / password info", what is the purpose of them expiring ? If I check the box that I want Firefox, etc. to REMEMBER my login/password info, what is accomplished by it expiring after a period of time and me having to re-enter it ? As long as I have the account with a particular website setup, in all likelihood, I am going to be keeping the same user name and password, why have it wiped out, just to have to turn right around and re-enter the same info. I could see having it expire, if they were going to require you to change passwords or something but this is not what is happening.

Thanks.

[patey]

If I check the box that I want Firefox, etc. to REMEMBER my login/password info,

I think you might be confusing passwords stored by Firefox with those stored by websites in the form of cookies.

You can see which logins Firefox is storing in its password manager by going to Edit -> Preferences -> Security -> Saved_Passwords. Logins listed here should be remembered as long as you keep your firefox profile.

Some web pages are set up so that Firefox won't save the password. If these sites give you an option to save the password (often in the form of a checkbox) then a cookie is being used to store the login information. The expiry of these cookies is set by the website and can't easily be changed by the user.

[bjornmu]

It's likely not the password that expires, but your login. eBay for example, expires after 24 hours, another auction site I use expires the login after only 15 minutes, and Lonely Planet forums seems to expire after a month or so. Others do not expire. This is all up to the web site and there's nothing you can do about it. If you delete the cookie associated with the login, you will also have to log in again.