Can't find recent pending/won bids

[Confused - for the moment]

Hello Mario. I cannot find my recent and/or pending bids. I changed my password on eBay last night, but am - obviously - able to log on to Gixen. Would that be the cause?

[nochkin]

It's not a bug, it's a feature -- once password changed then everything is gone.

[Confused no more]

I did not keep track - or even Watch - the items I had Grouped. Do you know if there is any way to re-create or find what I had in my to-be-Sniped account?

[Cupid]

Absolutely... but perhaps our poster wont realise why its a feature?

Once you've changed your password all those snipes that were registered with the old password would fail as gixen would fail to log in to ebay in order to place those bids... I guess you could argue that if you logged in to gixen again (with the same id) it could go though all your snipes and change the password to the new one before displaying them ... it doesn't do that and personally I dont think it should.

(FYI technically speaking gixen stores snipes with your id and password as the primary key)
_________________
Mark

[Gixen]

[Confused - not dazed]

[Cupid]

OK my reasoning for not expecting it to is this... should, god forbid, anything happen to the gixen front end, so I can't get in (it has happened... though only once that I recall)... and at that time I want to change my snipe or even cancel it I can't... but I can still change my password on eBay and effectively cancel all my gixen bids.... then I can happily bid by some other means and not worry that gixen will have any influence.

Then gixen comes back and I want to use it again... I personally don't want those I've deliberately cancelled by changing my password to be re-enabled.

I don't know how difficult a change it would be for gixen to operate as you expected (and I explained), but from experience I do know that changing values that are used as a primary key, in a database is usually 'challenging'. Mario may well have a different view on this.
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Mark

[All clear]

That is a clear explanation. Thank you.

In closing - for me anyway - I'd suggest that the scenario of not wanting your Gixen bids to be cancelled is more likely than needing to change your password on eBay to remove pending Snipes. But I leave that all to Mario.

From a review of the forum, the issue does not seem to be common. But perhaps it warrants a FAQ as a warning. "If you change your eBay password, you'll lose all pending Snipes."

Thanks again.[/i]

[Cupid]

[mario]

This is so by design... Note that unlike other sniping services, Gixen does not store ebay passwords longer than necessary to execute snipes (latest auction scheduled + 48 hours). Every snipe is saved as (item_id, username, password, bid) in the database.

One reason this is so is security and Gixen authentication scheme. If something goes wrong with gixen-to-ebay authentication that would allow someone to log in to user's account with a different password, such break-in would be completely useless at the moment (as no snipes under original pair username/password would be visible). I like that feature.

So, a long story short - the moment you change your password, all your snipes are dead entries in the database.

[juangrande]

It might be a good idea to add this to the FAQ. Here's my proposal for the text:

I changed my eBay password and now I can't find any of my scheduled snipes on Gixen. What happened?

The snipes were effectively canceled when you changed your eBay password. This is by design. Note that unlike other sniping services, Gixen does not store eBay passwords longer than necessary to execute snipes: it only stores them for 48 hours past the latest scheduled snipe. Every snipe is saved as (item_id, username, password, bid) in the database; thus, changing your password cuts the database links to your scheduled snipes, effectively canceling them. This provides an extra layer of security for your Gixen account should someone manage to log in to your eBay account with a different password: they would still be unable to access your Gixen account.
_________________
John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra

[mario]

Thanks John... I think you might have misunderstood the last part. Gixen authenticates (user, password) with ebay. If ebay changes the "logged in" or "could not log in" screens (this happened only once), Gixen can misinterpret these screens and allow someone to log in to Gixen (with invalid ebay password). Since active snipes are saved under (username, password) pair, and passwords are different, the intruder would not see the scheduled snipes.

[juangrande]

Well, it certainly is the case that what I wrote is not accurate, regardless of whether I understood or not. How about the following?

I changed my eBay password and now I can't find any of my scheduled snipes on Gixen. What happened?

The snipes were effectively canceled when you changed your eBay password. This is by design. Note that unlike other sniping services, Gixen does not store eBay passwords longer than necessary to execute snipes: it only stores them for 48 hours past the latest scheduled snipe. Every snipe is saved as (item_id, username, password, bid) in the database; thus, changing your password cuts the database links to your scheduled snipes, effectively canceling them. This provides an extra layer of security for your Gixen account should someone manage to log in to your eBay account with a different password: they would be unable to see the snipes scheduled in your Gixen account.
_________________
John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra

[mario]

It may too much information for new users, and thus confusing. I'll include the first part only. Thanks for formulating the text.