Important: you must now have cookies enabled to log into the forum

[exxos]

Important: you must now have cookies enabled to log in

A short but important heads-up for members.

Logging in to the forum now requires cookies to be enabled in your browser. If you have cookies blocked or disabled, the login simply won't work, and (depending on your browser) you may see a confusing "incorrect password" message even when your password is correct. To help with that, the login page will now show a clear warning if it detects cookies are turned off.

Why the change?
This is part of the anti-bot work described in detail here: Forum performance / caching changes

The short version: the bots flooding the forum now fake cookies and session IDs to disguise themselves as real visitors. The only reliable way left to tell a genuine logged-in member apart from the flood is a proper working cookie, so logins now depend on it. It's not something I can work around, unfortunately; it's what makes the whole protection hold together.

Previously, phpBB could let people log in without cookies (it passed the session through the web address instead). That option had to be removed, because it's exactly the loophole the bots exploit, and while cookies are switched off there's no safe way to tell a real member from the flood. I honestly don't know how many people, if any, logged in that way, but if you were one of them, it's simply not possible anymore, sorry.

What you need to do
Nothing, if you already have cookies enabled (almost everyone does). If you ever can't log in, check that cookies aren't being blocked for this site, either in your browser settings or by a privacy/cookie extension, then reload the login page.

As always, once logged in everything works exactly as normal. Thanks for bearing with it.