Another member's workspace opening up as "My Workspace"

[patflynn]

For the past couple of weeks I have been noticing, from more than one PC, that

when I go to "My Workspace" on this website, I am erroneously pulling up the

workspace of other PN members. I'm simply clicking the My Workspace link at the

top right of the screen, and landing in another person's workspace. So far this

has happened a dozen or more times. In all but one of those cases, I am getting

the workspace of one particular PN member - not sure why him but he did request

my e-mail address recently. In one case I did pull up the workspace of another

member whom I'd never heard of before and have never heard from, but for

whatever reason this glitch seems to favor one particular member.

 

When this happens, I can see lots of information about this other member (like

when his subscription expired, what he has posted recently, etc), but when I

click on one of the links there, I am directed back to my own workspace. For

example, if I click on this person's homepage personal image, up comes my own

picture instead. So the web session is recognizing that I am the actual PN

member, but for some reason it is showing me another member's information.

 

This could get dangerous. So far it does not seem possible to change another

user's settings or post comments and ratings as another member, but that threat

clearly exists. And anyway, I doubt if the other member wants me seeing his

info, even if it is just his membership expiration status. Please investigate

this and feel free to e-mail me with any requests for further detail.

[will king]

Hmm, that's pretty funny Patrick. This has happened to me as well and what makes it really ironic is the page that was disaplyed as my Workspace was your page. Happended about a week ago.

[will king]

Okay, now this is getting spooky. It just happended again with Patrick's page. I click on "my workspace" and Patrick's page comes up.

[will king]

Clicked on it again and now I'm Andrew Kowalczyk.

[afs760bf]

OK, you guys, I guess now we know where the trolls come from. They're us.

[will king]

Okay, now I'm David Crenshaw. I want my workspace back.

[jsc]

You guys both registered from the same IP address, along with a bunch of other people.

From what I can tell, that IP address is a gateway for your institution. It probably also acts as

a caching proxy for web pages, which is probably holding on to the last version of the

workspace page that it saw. I've changed that page to make it not do that, but it's not

guaranteed to work. Let me know if you happen to see that problem again.

[will king]

Maybe I'm confused, but I doubt that I'm coming from the same IP as any other member listed above. I'm currently on a workstation that goes through a proxy, that goes throughs a huge enterprise firewall.

[patflynn]

During this ongoing event I've come onto PN from multiple ISPs, definitely from several different IP addresses. But I'm too in the dark to guess what mechanism could somehow be editing IP info so that different sources look identical. Have to venture that it sounds like malware if it isn't unintended side effects of new programming for site upgrades.

[patflynn]

I have not seen another iteration of this problem since Jin Choi made the adjustment described above. If I see the problem again I will post another notice in this forum. Thanks for the help.