I hit the back button and I see: "BuddhaTop, you have no new messages in your inbox." I'm like WTF how does this happen? I'm not BuddhaTop nor did he or anyone else log in while I took a leak. So then I click on inbox to see whose messages are in there and its my messages that are in there. I hit back again and his name is gone replaced with mine.
Are you at a computer where someone else could have logged in from that machine at any point in the past.
It sounds like the page from a past login was cached in your browser's memory. If you go back to the homepage and hit the refresh button, it will keep that problem from happening again. As a sidenote to all members, our system keeps you logged indefinitely until you log out. This is done so you don't have to keep logging in every time you visit ET. However, if you don't log out on a machine that is also used by other people, they may be able to see your private messages or edit your preferences if they happen to visit ET after you.
I never log in and out because the cookies recognize me when I type ET into the URL. Does that mean that I am technically speaking always logged in? If so, then I assume others do the same too, thus the number showing members and visitors are incorrect because they show people like me as indefiniatelly logged in....
Yes. The "users currently online" number reflects the actual number of people who are actually surfing the site at that moment, which is tracked by a completely different cookie.