Needing to re-enter password to use gmail under Safari

[hajime]

Hi, it seems to me that quite often, I am required to re-enter password to access my gmail accounts even I don't click logout. Is this set by gmail or safari?

 

[Mousse]

Hi, it seems to me that quite often, I am required to re-enter password to access my gmail accounts even I don't click logout. Is this set by gmail or safari?

99.44% certain it's Safari. Sounds like cookies being deleted, settings being reset or something.

 

[chown33]

Please explain how often is "quite often". I'd like a number in minutes or hours. It doesn't need to be precise, but I can't tell whether "quite often" means "every 2 minutes" or "twice a day". The former sounds like a bug. The latter sounds reasonable.

Browser cookies associated with many account logins typically expire after some period of time. This is a sensible security measure, so if you forget to logout, the cookies granting access to the account will eventually expire on their own, rather than remaining valid forever. This applies to online email accounts, Amazon accounts, and many others.

The expiration time of browser cookies is set by the server. That would be the gmail server in this case.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Browser cookies associated with many account logins typically expire after some period of time. This is a sensible security measure, so if you forget to logout, the cookies granting access to the account will eventually expire on their own, rather than remaining valid forever. This applies to online email accounts, Amazon accounts, and many others.

I've noted this myself for years. Even if I don't explicitly log out I get prompted for password reentry once or twice a week for certain sites like Google or Amazon.

For financial service websites (e.g., my brokerage firm), the browser cookie expiration is really quick, typically something like fifteen minutes of inactivity. I don't see a noticeable difference if I'm on a Wintel box running Chrome.

 

[hajime]

Please explain how often is "quite often". I'd like a number in minutes or hours. It doesn't need to be precise, but I can't tell whether "quite often" means "every 2 minutes" or "twice a day". The former sounds like a bug. The latter sounds reasonable.

Browser cookies associated with many account logins typically expire after some period of time. This is a sensible security measure, so if you forget to logout, the cookies granting access to the account will eventually expire on their own, rather than remaining valid forever. This applies to online email accounts, Amazon accounts, and many others.

The expiration time of browser cookies is set by the server. That would be the gmail server in this case.

Not minutes, but more like a day.

 

[chown33]

For a web-based mail site, having the cookies expire after a day, or even a half-day, seems completely reasonable to me.