What's the relationship between cookies and the CaptchaImage? January 7, 2006 8:23 PM   Subscribe

What's the relationship between cookies and the CaptchaImage?

I've been playing with Firefox's cookie settings, trying to make it so that I don't have to login to MeFi every time. I can't seem to make it work. Given that we're using the CaptchaImage to prevent automated posting - will this ever work? Or will I always need to login each time I come to the site (once I've closed my browser)?
posted by Dunwitty to Bugs at 8:23 PM (11 comments total)

Allow the cookie to be set permanently. Do not discard it at the end of the session.

This is the default behavior.
posted by majick at 8:38 PM on January 7, 2006


I think I've logged on to meta like once in my life and it has always just stuck... the question is what are you doing to make it not so?
posted by Rhomboid at 8:48 PM on January 7, 2006


Have you gone to Tools/Options/Cookies and then picked 'until they expire' from the Keep Cookies dropdown menu? It sounds like you have the 'until I close Firefox' option picked.
posted by iconomy at 9:02 PM on January 7, 2006


Tools/Options/Privacy/Cookies, that is.
posted by iconomy at 9:03 PM on January 7, 2006


Do you have the "clear private data" tool (in v1.5) set to clear all of your cookies each time you close Firefox? Cause that would do it. I've only had to log in once.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:28 PM on January 7, 2006


Yeah, the cookies are already designed to stick around forever. Follow the above advice to tweak your browser back to working the way it should with metafilter.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:59 PM on January 7, 2006


Just don't go to the NSA site with those setting, lord knows what they dump on ya
posted by edgeways at 10:12 PM on January 7, 2006


I logged in exactly once, back in 1987, and it's a good thing that cookie sticks around, because I'm just not sure I remember the old password....
posted by kjh at 12:59 AM on January 8, 2006


I've never even seen the captcha, because I have not had to log on since they were implemted.
posted by delmoi at 1:20 AM on January 8, 2006


You can tell it to ask you what to do with each cookie; then you can block some, keep some until the end of the session, and keep some forever, like MetaFilter's.

On OS X, this is in Preferences > Privacy > Cookies. Allow sites to set cookies, but select "Ask me every time" from the "Keep cookies:" dropdown menu.
posted by librarina at 10:19 AM on January 8, 2006


delmoi writes "I've never even seen the captcha, because I have not had to log on since they were implemted."

Count yourself lucky, every few weeks a bad site crashes FF on me and I seem to fall into an endless loop of captcha failed logins.
posted by Mitheral at 11:07 AM on January 9, 2006


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