Can I ask a question?

How many of you chaps are permanently logged in to any of the forums you contribute to?

As far as I'm aware - and it's only that, 'cos I ain't no IT expert - there are no disadvantages in being plugged in the whole time unless you are worried that someone else will use your computer to post something funnier than what you posted.

The advantage is pretty clear; there's no need to log in and risk some part of the log in procedure not working properly.

I don't belong to many forums at all, but on two of the four I do post stuff on I've never been logged off since I joined. Both of those are absolute whoppers compared to the other place (and obviously to this), with thousands and thousands of members.

On one of them I've been on logged in permanently since 2003, barring power cuts, reinstalling operating systems and user errors, and nothing bad has ever happened. I've been on the other one all the time since 2009.

Clearly it's not an issue on things like bank websites because their software will log you out automatically after a few minutes if you don't do anything.

So why don't more people do it?

Saves an awful lot of faff.

If you're concerned that someone else might notice you and wonder why you're on there all the time, so what?

It's only the Internet; it ain't real life.

I'm sorry Alan - you're quite right.

I meant permanently logged to a site in as in not clicking log out when you've finished looking at it, and having to go through all the palaver of entering passwords and trying to decipher a handful of letters that look as if they were written by a drunk person whenever you want to get back on again.

Apparently, some people are having trouble logging in due to the Capcha system not displaying letters to input.

My best guess is that this is something to do with a cookie put onto their computers by the forum software that counts the number of attempts made to enter and then closes the system after a certain number (either that or someone is playing dirty tricks?)

I tend to log out whenever I'm not going to be at the keyboard so that people don't expect a response from me if I'm not online at the time. I have saved my log in details in Firefox so I only have to enter the letters to get in - no big deal.

If you can't read the drunken letters, click the little arrow button in the box and a new set will be displayed that may be easier to decipher.