Once you have identified yourself to Raven during a browser session, Raven can remember who you are so that you can be identified to new sites without having to re-enter your CRSid or password, as long as the new site does not insist that the password is quoted again.
You have four login options that you can choose from at https://raven.cam.ac.uk/auth/account/:
- Don't login to Raven
The Raven server won't do anything to remember you and you'll have to provide your user-id and password again the next time a web site asks Raven to identify you. - Login, but confirm before authenticating to new sites
The Raven server will set a cookie to remember who you are for the rest of your browser session, but will ask you for confirmation before passing on your identity to further web sites. - Login and automatically authenticate to new local sites
The Raven server will set a cookie to remember who you are, and will automatically pass on your identity to additional web sites only if they are local (e.g. they use hostnames in ending cam.ac.uk). For all other sites it will first ask for confirmation. This provides additional convenience at the expense of a small loss of privacy. - Login and automatically authenticate to new sites
The Raven server will set a cookie to remember who you are for the rest of your browser session and will automatically pass on your identity to additional web sites if they ask. This provides additional convenience at the expense of a larger loss of privacy.
If you chose either of the login options then you can also set an upper limit on how long you want to stay logged-in using the drop down menu. If you haven't expressed a preference then Raven will remember you, will automatically authenticate to new local sites (but not to non-local ones), and will expire logins after 10 hours. Many sites will expire logins before this.
You can change these options while logging in by selecting 'override login options for this session'. You can change the default values for future sessions at https://raven.cam.ac.uk/auth/account/ (this page can also be reached from the 'account management page' link on the Raven front page at http://raven.cam.ac.uk/).
The Raven login facility requires that your browser accepts cookies from the Raven server. If it rejects them it will be as if you always choose 'don't login to Raven'. These cookies automatically expire when you quit your browser and only return information to the Raven server.