Why do I have to log into hotmail twice?

I just recently noticed I have to attempt a login into hotmail twice before it succeeds. Although I'm using Google Chrome (3.0.195.21), the symptoms are well described in a Mozilla thread. In short, I'm told:

The e-mail address or password is incorrect. Please try again.

The thread on mozilla's site that supposed to describe the latest details (and the 1st hit on google when I search for "hotmail login twice") requires an account to read so I'm hoping someone here has a good synopsis of what the cause is.

I normally start at hotmail.com, which redirects to login.live.com/.... I can login by starting at mail.live.com, using IE8 or attempting a 2nd login. Oddly, if I start at login.live.com Chrome tells me there is a redirect loop.

Does anyone know or have a public link to the root cause of the double login?

(it is a hotmail account I'm login into)

EDIT - Caused by my 'restricting how 3rd parties can use cookies'. If I allow all cookies, it works first time.

Tony Lee

Posted 2009-09-22T02:55:51.623

Reputation: 720

5The first authentication is to ensure that you have a hotmail account, and the second is to punish you for using a microsoft email service :) – Nippysaurus – 2009-09-22T06:24:40.347

2My apologies, but in my defense, my hotmail account is the throw away one for all those things that insist I give them an email account. – Tony Lee – 2009-09-22T16:16:46.017

Answers

It is because they are skating around the edge of the cross-site scripting safeguards in your browser and some of what is being done are tripping them.

The core problem is that there are multiple domains involved with logging into and accessing a HotMail account and all of them need you to be authenticated. Since cookies need common domain names to transfer between sites, this is part of the solution, but involving a completely different domain scotches that, so they do other tricks (including redirects) in an effort to make it all work.

I see this problem in Opera with Ebay, PayPal, Google Mail and recently YouTube, so it's not a purely HotMail thing. And the Opera fora have posts about it happening in other sits, too. Then too, Chrome (and Opera) have quite low percentages of browser share, so sites that do this would tend to target IE and FireFox first.

staticsan

Posted 2009-09-22T02:55:51.623

Reputation: 726

This is my theory as well so I'm marking it as the correct answer. I think load balancing is causing the random behavior of working and not working. On first try, I get redirected to a different server from the one I sent the auth to, it fails because it can't access a cookie but works the second time because that's the server I'm supposed to go to. – Tony Lee – 2009-09-24T22:44:23.963

Apparently if you click sign out after viewing your email, instead of just navigating away from the page, it shouldn't happen again, but you will have to delete your cookies for their domain once to fix it (Chrome: Options -> "Under the hood" -> Privacy -> Cookies -> Show all cookies -> remove hotmail.com cookies). The bug has been around for quite a while, check out this Mac OS X hints article.

John T

Posted 2009-09-22T02:55:51.623

Reputation: 149 037

1Still happens when I sign out. Still happens when I clear the cookies. I know I cleared the cookies because it lost my "remembered email" account and I had to relog into SU. This has never happened when I start at mail.live.com so even if cookies are involved, it's not the whole story. – Tony Lee – 2009-09-22T03:33:41.907

what version of chrome are you using? – John T – 2009-09-22T04:01:06.283

I did have 2.0.17x.x but was updated to 3.0.195.21 last night - now I can't repro at work! I'll have to check my home machine, which has the same problem. – Tony Lee – 2009-09-22T16:22:48.873

so updating seems to have solved your problem? Let me know so I can improve my answer. – John T – 2009-09-22T16:53:48.937

It's still reproducible at home with 3.0.195.21 – Tony Lee – 2009-09-23T01:47:24.330

I've tried all the suggested fixes with no luck. I'm using Windows 7 and Explorer 8. One thing I noticed that may help troubleshoot the problem. When you try to go to hotmail, and you get the blank login page, try clicking on the "Get a single-use code to sign in with". This logged me in to my Hotmail account without having to enter my login id and password. So my login info was previously saved in the cookie or this would not have happended.

Windows Live ID:

example555@hotmail.com

Password:

Forgot your password? Remember me

Remember my password

Not your computer? Get a single-use code to sign in with

Mark

Posted 2009-09-22T02:55:51.623

Reputation: 1

I encountered the same problem with Google Chrome. AFAIK, this problem occurred on gmail and yahoo as well.

I am using version 4.0.x.x

My best guess is that this is a bug in Google Chrome

Graviton

Posted 2009-09-22T02:55:51.623

Reputation: 5 006