992299 - login to MyYahoo does not retain user name OR password SAME works in SeaMonkey

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[George Kinal]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140314220517

Steps to reproduce:

Use URL for yahoo.com or login.yahoo.com

window pops up asking for user name and password, I enter them

now MyYahoo page with financials shows up

close Firefox

restart Firefox

myyahoo asks for login again - user name and password NOT retained


Doing exact same in SeaMonkey works properly.

(These on OS 10.7.5 and FF 28.  FF 28 on Windows 7 and on Linux works correctly, and so did previous versions)


Actual results:

I have to enter user name and password every time

Comment 1

[Carol Chung[:lizardwalk5]]

[bugday-20140407] 
X86 Mac OSX 10.9.2

Not clear if this is a support issue or a bug but am posting a workaround.

If you go to Firefox > Preferences, then select Security.
Under Passwords, check "Remember passwords for sites" (this is unchecked by default)

Afterward, enter your login credentials at login.yahoo.com and log in.
You will need to confirm in a popup that you are allowing Firefox to remember the password.
Log out from yahoo and quit Firefox.
Reopen Firefox.
Open login.yahoo.com and enter your username, then your password should be automatically inserted.

Note: I also tried to use the Yahoo checkbox, Keep me signed in (using mail.yahoo.com on Chrome browser and yahoo did not appear to retain the login credentials). Not clear if there's an issue with Yahoo on Mac OSX.

Comment 2

[George Kinal]

Lizard:

Thanks, but this does not help. I do not want just the password inserted, I want the complete user name AND password retained as sticky (or with history). There is a difference between login.yahoo.com and my.yahoo.com in  terms of stickiness. SeaMonkey works correctly, and for that matter Firefox did as well until recently (possibly, until the late March upgrade to Firefox 28).

I notice that my Firefox version is V28 on this Mac mini and OS 10.7.5. HOWEVER on a MacBoo0k with OS 10.6.8, I have been upgraded to beta release 29, and THAT version works properly WRT my.yahoo.

I will check later on Firefox in Linux, and also see if I can install V29 beta.

Comment 3

[George Kinal]

UPDATES:

1. Firefox 29 beta same as 28 on Mac Mini and 10.7.5.
2. Again, FF 29 beta is OK on Macbook and 10.6.8.
3. CLUE: Firefox 28 in Linux Mint (Virtual Machine) has a CRITICAl difference: when closing it, it asks whether I want to retain the same tabs or not. By retaining the same tabs, when the tab for my.yahoo.com re-opens, it shows the desired "sticky" behavior, same as SeaMonkey.
4. Therefore, my problem may be cured if I could re-enable the option to retain tabs before closing.

WHY hhas this option disappeared in some cases and not others ?

Comment 4

[Carol Chung[:lizardwalk5]]

Hi George, this support ticket might be of some help (see comment by Jscher2000, ):

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/981393

On the latest Firefox nightly build (31.0a1), I could do the following:
1 Open www.yahoo.com in Firefox
2 Sign in (redirects to login.yahoo.com)
  Check the Keep me signed in box
3 Quit Firefox
4 Open Firefox and navigate to one of the following sites:
  a www.yahoo.com
  b my.yahoo.com
  c mail.yahoo.com
  >for all 3 sites, my login credentials are remembered and do not require user name or password
5 Note that if I try to navigate directly to login.yahoo.com, my login credentials are not remembered.

As for the issue with retaining tabs, it looks like the latest Firefox install is not migrating older version Preferences. You might need to 
1 Go to Preferences > General.
2 Under Startup, When Firefox starts, select the list option: Show my windows and tabs from last time.
If the appropriate setting is already set, that might be a different issue.

Comment 5

[George Kinal]

No change (improvement) for nightly build 31. The first time only, it asked if I wanted to remember the password. But on reopening, my.yahoo does not work without full login.

I did note some peculiarities. 1) my user name is not the same as the brief name showing next to my little profile figurehead. And on at least one occasion I saw a different brief name.   2) Also, I had a hard time wit Yahoo asking for a number of captchas befor I could log in.

Anyway, at this stage it is quite clear that the problem is completely unique to this Mac Mini and Firefox versions 28 and higher. There is some very subtle interaction between the Yahoo password retention and Firefox.

Comment 6

[George Kinal]

More updates.

1. Older versions back to 27 behave the same.

2. Pretty clear that the problem comes from how My.yahoo behaves. In other browsers and operating systems, if the user name and password are remembered, that info is sent to the appropriate URL (presumably, here, redirect to login.yahoo.com). In Firefox on Mac Mi9n9i OS 10.7.5, the separate login window does not come up until I choose Sign In. Then and only then do I get autofill of user name and password, but I must explicitly confirm sign in.

This is different from the way that, for example, mail.google.com works. There, my gmail is automatically sent withe user name and password, and I get the webmail page.

God only knows how one would be able to tell Yahoo about this, especially since the process looks OK on almost every other browser/OS.

Does anyone know if there are about:config entries that might help ?

Comment 7

[Carol Chung[:lizardwalk5]]

[bugday-20140407] followup 
needs-replication

X86 Mac OSX 10.9.2
Tested with Firefox Nightly 31.0a1(2014-04-07)

Hi George, thanks for doing all the testing on different OS's and devices. I don't have enough background on the Yahoo Keep me signed in feature and its relationship to Firefox to add more to this bug. I'm marking it so someone else can follow up and try to replicate it. Thanks again.

Comment 8

[[:Aleksej]]

George, have you created Firefox profiles when testing it?

I am not sure if this report is about password autofill or staying logged in.

See, for one, bug 923490.

Comment 9

[Carol Chung[:lizardwalk5]]

[bugday-20140414]
Adding a test case. x86 Mac OSX 10.9.2.

Testing Yahoo's "Keep Me Signed In" on Firefox 31.0a1 (2014-04-14)

Preconditions

1 Verify Yahoo account settings
  https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/asked-sign-checking-signed-box-sln2660.html?impressions=true
2 Verify that Firefox settings for saving passwords has been disabled.
  (for Firefox Nightly build)
  Nightly menu, select Preferences.
  From the Preferences window, select Security.
  Under Passwords, uncheck the Remember Passwords for sites checkbox.
  (*note, there might be other Firefox settings I am unaware of)

Testing steps

1 Open my.yahoo.com
2 Click Sign in
3 From the login window, enter a valid yahoo user name.
4 Enter a valid yahoo password.
5 Check the Keep me signed in checkbox.
6 Click the Sign in button.
  Expected result: You should be logged into yahoo.
7 Quit Firefox.
8 Reopen Firefox.
9 Open my.yahoo.com
  Expected result: You should be logged into yahoo. In the upper right you should see your user name and new email count.

Comment 10

[George Kinal]

Attachment: screen cap of MyYahoo showing recognition of My Yahoo BUT requests Sign On

Comment 11

[George Kinal]

No difference. Note piece of screen capture from My Yahoo. Still wants me to sign in.

INFURIATING. Firefox on THIS machine is the ONLY case that behaves this way. Firefox in Linux or Windows 7, SeaMonkey, Chrome, and EVEN Firefox on an older Macbook work correctly.

Further note that on a similar situation, for gmail, the user name and password ARE retained correctly in all browsers including Firefox.

Note I am using OS 10.7.5, not 10.9.2. But also note that the Macbook also has an older version of OS 10.

Comment 12

[George Kinal]

More detailed update.

1.  SeaMonkey  - the preferred behavior:
    a. Open SeaMonkey.app directly or by using Shortcut placed on desktop.
    b. All tabs open, including MyYahoo tab (proxied by login.yahoo.com) with all data fields open, also gmail.com - all user names and passwords recalled automatically.
    c. Close using Red Dot close. SeaMonkey icon remains in sidebar.
    d. OR, use full SeaMonkey QUIT command, then icon goes away from sidebar.
    e. Regardless, any re-opening of  SeaMonkey comes up with full sticky memory for my.yahoo and gmail.com.

2.  Firefox 29.0 and Nightly 31 - not always sticky for my.yahoo.com:
    a. Open with app or by shortcut.
    b. MyYahoo wants sign on via login.yahoo proxy.
    c. Close using Red Dot
       c1: Reopen via Sidebar icon. Then all memory is sticky without new sign-on.
    d. Close using Full Quit
        d1: Reopen using app or shortcut, memory not retained, needs new signon for My.Yahoo, but memory retai9ned for gmail.com without new sign on needed.

3. CHROME, for reference (though not related to mozilla):

    1. Open from shortcut.
    2. All tabs open with sticky memory, no new sign on required.
    3. Close using Red Dot. Icon remains in sidebar.
       3a: Reopen from sidebar icon, Chrome shows only one tab, no sign of the multiple tabs.
    4. Full QUIT of Chrome.
       4a: New open using shortcut, Chrome opens with remembered multiple tabs and all sticky memory info.


CONCLUSIONS: SeaMonkey is still the preferred application for multiple tab browsing. I could manage with either Firefox OR CHROME providing I remembered that Firefox should be Red Dotted, while CHROME should be fully QUIT.

1. Why only this Mac Mini behaves this way in Firefox is very peculiar (a MacBook, Firefox running under Linux, and FF in windows 7 behave as for SeaMonkey).

2. I understand the philosophical difference between quitting an application and the "Close but retain in memory" Red Dot cloture. This may matter for heavy duty processing or whatever. Most of the time it has NO practical difference. Anyway, why do the different browsers adopt different behaviors in that respect?

Comment 13

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

It sounds to me like Yahoo! is using session cookies and since you're not restoring the session, you're not remaining logged in. This has nothing to do with saving your password, this is about session restore and cookies but so far there is no indication that there is a bug in Firefox so I'm moving this back to untriaged.

(In reply to George Kinal from comment #3)
> 4. Therefore, my problem may be cured if I could re-enable the option to
> retain tabs before closing.
> 
> WHY hhas this option disappeared in some cases and not others ?

The option didn't disappear, you just have to change it from the default. See below:

(In reply to lizardwalk5 from comment #4)
> You might need to 
> 1 Go to Preferences > General.
> 2 Under Startup, When Firefox starts, select the list option: Show my
> windows and tabs from last time.
> If the appropriate setting is already set, that might be a different issue.

If this doesn't fix your problem, please attach (don't comment with) the "raw data" from about:support.

Comment 14

[George Kinal]

Folks - thanks for looking into this.
I now report a DIFFERENT behavior, as follows:
 1. I set preferences general with a home page consisting of ten separate tabs. Two of rel;evance are my.yahoo.com and mail.google.com, both of which have been logged in.
 2. I then also set preferences general to "show my windows and tabs from last time" for starting Firefox.
 3. NOW, when I reopen Firefox:  My.yahoo.com is KEEPING the logged in page, as desired.
    BUT, now mail.google.com asks for my password.

Again, regardless of what the explanation is, SeaMonkey, which uses Mozilla code, and Chrome BOTH retain the login data after re-opening. Firefox ON THIS COMPUTER ONLY seems to now not to be able to retain both. Firefox on other computers including a MacBook has no problem.

Not sure where to attach the raw data; I have these for both the MacMini and the Macbook, and will look for differences.

Comment 15

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Under "Attachments" on the this bug, choose "add an attachment"[1] and then click "paste text as attachment" or upload a text file.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?bugid=992299&action=enter

Comment 16

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Are you sure the privacy preferences are the same on the computers?

Comment 17

[George Kinal]

Attachment: about:support as suggested

Comment 18

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

I didn't managed to reproduce this issue on the latest release(43.0.4) nor the latest Nightly(46.0a1). Password is correctly saved and remembered.

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20160105164030

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0
Build ID: 20160111030207

Can you please try to reproduce this on the latest release(43.0.4) and latest Nightly(46.0a1) and provide the results?
When doing this, you could create a new clean Firefox profile, or maybe test in safe mode, as some of this issues may be caused by third party installed addons or custom settings
(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems).

Thank you,
Vlad

Comment 19

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

Hi,

Considering the fact that the reporter did not provide more informations on my request, I will mark this issue as Resolved - WFM.
If you can still reproduce this, feel free to reopen it and provide the requested information.

Thanks.