As my mother always says: “Know your limits.” Actually, in this case, it’s more like knowing PassPack’s limits. As you know, you can, and should, teach PassPack how to login to new websites with your PassPack It! button. This should work pretty often, but there are some times when it’s better to ask for help. Here are some examples.
Tips to make it work
Before you read on to the solutions to common problems, make sure have read this article on how to teach PassPack a website. And remember… go slowly.
When you need more fields
Some websites use a captcha, require you to check boxes, or request that you fill out more fields than just the username and password.
In these cases, the solution is very simple: fill out the extra fields, check boxes and captchas, BEFORE pressing your PassPack It! button. … Easy as that.
When it used to work
Sometimes, you’ll just swear that you’ve already used auto-login on a website, but when you come back to it, it asks you to “teach” it. No worries, chance are, you’re not going crazy. If a website has more than one login form (for example: one on a login page and one on the home page) or even a login form on every page, then you may come across this behavior.
It’s easy to avoid this by always using the homepage login form, or at least the most obvious one.
If that’s not an option, then we can manually set up the entire website for you. Just send us an email, with “Multiple Login Forms” in the subject line, and a link to the website.
When a website changes
A website’s structure can change from time to time - that’s part of the nature of internet. Should these changes effect the login form, the PassPack It! button may not be able to automatically log you in.
If you think this has happened, just send us an email, with “Website Changed” in the subject line, and a link to the website.
When it just refuses to work
This can be frustrating for you (I know), but there are some very tricky things that may cause the PassPack It! button to get confused. Here are some:
- the login is on a different domain (ex. Flickr login on Yahoo)
- the site uses multiple step login (ex. egg.com)
- the login is in a Flash movie or Java Applet
- the site itself has errors
In case #1, we can help. Just send us an email, with “Multiple Domains” in the subject line, and a link to both the website AND the login page.
For all the others, sorry but your auto-login will not work. PassPack might (big maybe) support #2 in the future, but it will never support #3 or #4.
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5 Comments
What about HTTP basic authentication? I understand that it might be impossible because you base your current auto-login solution on Javascript interaction with forms. Any thoughts?
Best regards,
Hans
@Hans
Actually, it *is* possible, but it’s not implemented.
I’ll add this to our feature requests. Thanks!
Tara
So, is there any progress on the support for HTTP Basic Auth? Since many of my sites does indeed use HTTP Basic Auth, it is kind of important to me. I might have to switch to Clipperz if this isn’t a priority for you. (Sorry, this isn’t meant as a threat.)
Hi Hans,
No worries, no threat taken. It is on the list of things to do, but I have to be honest, it’s not a top priority.
We’ve yet to find a truly secure way of handling it. Does Clipperz allow that?
One option might be storing those logins in Clipperz as a slave account to your Passpack account. Passpack’s auto-login can log you into Clipperz, but not the other way around.
Hope that helps.
Hm, I don’t understand how HTTP Basic AUTH is harder to get secure? It’s just a HTTP request with an extra header “Authorization: Basic …”. Can’t you just send the request directly?
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