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You know what really charrs my veal? When websites or apps you're using randomly sign you out at the worst possible time.

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Your boss has sent you something urgent, but you can't reply in time due to the rigour

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moral of signing back in, and suddenly you're unemployed and out on the streets.

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Hey, if it happened to me, it could happen to you. Okay, maybe it's not a fat dire, but services that end your session with no warning are

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infuriating. So, why does it happen? Typically, it comes down to the service trying to keep you secure in some way.

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And I get it, staying safe online is super important.

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But why is signing you out a solution? Typically, services can sign you out after a certain amount of time has passed since

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your last sign in or since you were last active.

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This is to help prevent an attacker who has broken into your account from having access

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to it indefinitely. Let's say that someone gets into your PC, where you're already signed into a service

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that you use all the time. Having an expiration date on your session, which can be done through the use of cookies

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if you're going through a web browser, means that at some point, the attacker will need

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to actually have your password and possibly your two-factor device to get back in.

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Different services can set very different sign-in intervals, explaining why you might

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never have problems with something like Twitter, while Gmail can be very annoying when you're

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trying to pull up an important work message or a sheet or a doc.

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Of course, this sign-in duration thing isn't exactly foolproof, so a service might make

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you sign back in if it detects something is amiss through a technique called fingerprinting.

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This is when a service collects data on you to make it easier to identify you.

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And although this obviously raises privacy concerns, it can help from a security perspective.

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For example, sites can track everything from your location to the size of the screen you're

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using to your audio configuration. And if there's enough of a change in those things the next time you use the service,

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it may trigger a request to sign in again. Just in case these changes aren't the result of simply using your laptop in a different

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location when you get off the airplane, and it's actually the result of an attacker trying

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to drain your bank account. But because fingerprinting has plenty of privacy-conscious critics, certain browsers are trying to make

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it difficult for services to track you for any reason.

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Therefore, it's becoming more common for browsers to block or delete tracking cookies,

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especially if they originate from a different domain. One funny example is if you're trying to use Microsoft Teams, your browser might be

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deleting cookies from Skype.com, which actually ties into the team's service.

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So you might get prompts to sign in more often than you'd expect, or even more often

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than Microsoft themselves would like.

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Thanks Microsoft. Alright, fine. All this inconvenience is here to keep me safe.

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That might be alright if this actually worked as intended, but it often doesn't.

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Sometimes you can get signed out because your organization doesn't manage saved credentials

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correctly. This is a huge problem with services often used for office communications, like Teams.

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Other times, authentication issues can rear their ugly heads. For example, the much-blind Microsoft Teams works together with the Microsoft Authenticator

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app if you're trying to use it on a smartphone. So if Teams is misbehaving, you might burn lots of time trying to solve the issue with

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the Teams app itself when the actual solution is to clear the Authenticator's cache and

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restart it. So the bottom line is that unless something on your device or within your organization

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is configured incorrectly, you might be at the mercy of this service themselves.

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So stay cool if you're randomly asked to sign in again, and remember not to try and

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punch in your 20-character password while you're driving on the freeway.

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The cops probably won't buy your juice of being safety conscious.

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So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in the comment section of course

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with your ideas for topics that we should cover in the future.