steve57:
I had an issue couple of months ago making a purchase on Ebay. Took 4 attempts to get the payment to go through, all because for some mysterious reason Paypal thought I had logged in from a different device. I had done nothing of the sort, I was using same PC I’ve been using for last 10 years!
What caused all this behaviour I’ve no idea, but it annoyed the hell out of me, so I can fully understand your frustration Matilda.
Yes, I do get that too! I use a Chromebook and have an Android tablet and smart phone so maybe the websites go a bit security-mad and block us? Cyber security is something I’d like to learn more about.
Ok …
Typically what’s happening is that your ISP (for example BT) has switched a block of addresses from one free pool to another, so all of a sudden people in Manchester will be getting addresses that 5 minutes earlier were being issued in London. When this happens, the ISP needs to update the GEOIP database that tracks “where” addresses are being issued. Invariably there is a lag, and sometimes the ISP can be quite slow … so for a while, addresses will report being somewhere they are not. i.e. the location of an address is dependent on a manual database push. When this happens, you can sometimes get a message from Netflix saying something like “I know you’re in Cardiff, but someone just accessed your account from Croydon, was this you?”.
… there is a lot of string and sticky tape going on behind the scenes of the Internet, it really is amazing it performs as well as it does!
Aha! Now that strikes a chord with me Mad Penguin because I notice quite often that the Google homepage changes my location to areas/towns that I am not actually residing in. Thanks for explaining that.
Ok, so first off, the Ad Id thing, I’m guessing they are referring to the UDID, this would not surprise me for phones and indeed other non-Linux OS’s - but it’s not a feature of “Linux”. i.e. if you’re using Linux, this should not be something you would need to worry about.
As I understand it, incognito mode shields the browser session from your local environment / settings on your PC. Specifically your local settings for a given site (the stuff we talked about clearing) but maybe more significantly, your current google credentials.
Things you could try;
Clearing your settings for the site
Trying the site while logged out of your google account in Chrome
Trying the site while logged into Google as a different user (i.e. register a new google account)
To try to clarify the clearance of settings in this context;
Go to the site in question in your browser
Hit Ctrl+Shift+I
You should see a menu down the left (although the position can be reconfigured)
Click “Storage” under the “Application Menu”
On the right is should list “Storage” and the URL of the site concerned
Under this is a “Clear site data” button
This should only clear data for that site
Just to reiterate, there are essentially two things that are likely to be associating you with an old account;
Your local storage (as above)
Your google account
Now Google do change things fairly frequently, but currently my understanding is that the application should not be able to read your google account settings unless you explicitly let it. i.e. it will pop up a box on the screen prompting you for which account to use.
If you’re not trying this from a Linux machine, it is possible you are falling foul of the UDID, in which case you should probably try a forum for the Operating System you are using (!)
Thank you for all that. I have no idea what I did after that last post about the issue but something worked and I was able to log into my Instagram and have been using it ever since. Sorry I kept forgetting to come back and let you fellas know.