Auto-log Out, Suddenly

[wolfway]

hello all,

i keep myself logged in at several sites, like metpage for example. well i had been logged on for many days now, and i was watching a movie, and after that i wanted to check metpage, or my gmail account and i noticed i was logged out.

i found this pretty weird and thought i was being hacked or something (i'm not a pro at all this computer stuff)

i asked a friend who knows lots of computers and he said that it is normal that you're logged out suddenly, but didn't really give an explanation.

is this in fact normal? i did a virusscan yesterday and no virus, spyware scan today & yesterday and just a few cookies (and one perhaps dangerous one in quarantine, i deleted that one now) so not a problem. it's always the same 4 cookies that return (metriweb,... or something).

can anybody ensure me that this is normal? the chance i'm being hacked is probably not so big (firewall + router) but still, makes me a bit scared
thanks

[sacha]

I have the same problem with my e-mail address(hotmail), I ask for remaining loged in, but when I come back I have to log in again, it's very strange ! But i don't think we are being hacked, if you have a great password there is no reason !

[sjmike]

It could be that you have your browser set to delete your cookies & history files every x amount of days. So its possible that the cookie file containing your password was deleted and that's why you needed to re-login.

[Metallifold]

@ Sacha: Many sites works the way that if you're online but not browsing, you will after a certain amount of time be automatically signed out.
I have experienced that with many message boards in particular.

Ah, Your problem could actually be because of firewall or internet connection problems. When I had trouble with my old firewall and my internet connection, I was able to sign on MSN and sites, but got sometimes logged out after a while, this was due to the the connection i had to internet via Wireless router sometimes breaking. So, check your firewall/router!
Problems like this and many more may also occure if you use the windows firewall along with some Antivirus programs that does not work together with the windows firewall. I have experienced this as well.