cabennett85/gittest — Issue #1503: meebo shows cached friends from previous user when logged in as a different user
Author: cabennett85
Created: 2012-03-02 00:52:51+00:00
State: open

Have there been any reports from users saying that the friends that show up on the buddy list are not what they expected? I experience this if I log in and have my chat enabled as multiple users.

Scenario:
- I login as EPAngela.
- Chat is enabled. I see all the people I expect to see on my buddy list.
- I log out and clear my cookies.
- I login as neobei. This user has 2 friends and 17 fans.
- Chat is enabled and I see my fiends as well as EPAngela's buddies on my buddy list!
- I restart my browser and clear my cookies.
- I login as neobei.
- My buddy list now is what I expect: just 2 friends.

I doubt that my changes today had anything to do with this behavior, since my main goal was simply to "control" the global variable "$MEEBO_HOOKS_ENABLED" which is the switch for whether or not to turn on the js output for Meebo in begin.php + end.php. This scenario is probably not very likely since people dont usually have multiple accounts on EP. (Or do they?) So I dont think it's very urgent. Just wanted to inform you of my findings... Maybe a ticket to document it?
~~~

Hey Neil,

This is because the 'logout' web service request was not called, and the previous session has not yet timed out. Meebo keeps a session alive for around 1 minute before terminating it - this allows for page transitions without having to recreate a new session each time.

If you leave the site, and the 'logout' web service function is not used, then the session will be waiting for the user to return. If the Meebo Bar appears again within that 1 minute window, then it will auto reattach the session - along with any additional sessions that have been created in the mean time.

The reason that clearing cookies doesn't prevent this, is because we keep most of the Meebo Bar session info in local storage, not in cookies.

We don't have any statistics on how often this happens, although we think it is pretty rare. IF you think that EP is particuarly prone to this problem and want to try to mitigate it as much as possible, you could send us the "logout" web service request when a user logs out of your site: https://dashboard.meebo.com/experienceproject/docs/meebo_web_service/#logout. This immediately terminates the session.

Let me know if this doesn't answer your question, or if you have any other questions for me.

Thanks!
Matt
- Hide quoted text -

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Neil Sheth wrote:
Hey Matt,

Hope things are going well! We've uncovered a minor issue, just wanted to run by you guys. One of our employees here says she gets her buddy list showing friends from multiple accounts at once, and just wanted to figure out what's going on.

Scnario:
- I login as EPAngela.
- Chat is enabled. I see all the people I expect to see on my buddy list.
- I log out and clear my cookies.
- I login as neobei. This user has 2 friends and 17 fans.
- Chat is enabled and I see my fiends as well as EPAngela's buddies on my buddy list!
- I restart my browser and clear my cookies.
- I login as neobei.
- My buddy list now is what I expect: just 2 friends.

Thanks for your help!

Neil