Vodacom caching

[Johnit]

Our organisation uses a portal to let users view and update their personal information. The pages are set with a directive not to cache, yet they are still cached by many ISPs. In all cases except Vodacom's 3G service, the information can be retrieved by using the browser's Ctrl F5 forced refresh. With Vodacom, this does not work. Has anybody else experienced this? It can be embarassing, since people then see someone elses information, or worse, update the with the wrong information.

 

[morkhans]

So are you saying Vodacom's proxy server is behaving as you would like? Your post isn't very clear. I must say I can't say I've ever seen a page that populates previously filled in fields after a page refresh. You could probably use https to prevent caching I would imagine.

 

[thegrimreaper]

We are having the exact same problem. There is a page on our website that has every directive we could think of to disable caching, among others :

<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="-1"/>

And we could not figure out why when some clients (and only clients in South Africa) log in to their accounts they are seeing a different account's info on the page, untill we called one of the clients this morning and he said he was using Vodacom 3G, then I read this post. We then tested this with Vodacom 3G, and presto - wrong account info.

 

[morkhans]

And we could not figure out why when some clients (and only clients in South Africa) log in to their accounts they are seeing a different account's info on the page, untill we called one of the clients this morning and he said he was using Vodacom 3G, then I read this post. We then tested this with Vodacom 3G, and presto - wrong account info.

So are you running your site over http or https?

 

[thegrimreaper]

So are you running your site over http or https?

We are using http

 

[morkhans]

We are using http

So while it's not desired and Vodacoms' proxy is caching things you are asking it not to; anything that is being passed in the clear over http can be cached and intercepted. Even if it's only Vodacoms' proxy would it not be wise to move your clients over to https?

 

[thegrimreaper]

So while it's not desired and Vodacoms' proxy is caching things you are asking it not to; anything that is being passed in the clear over http can be cached and intercepted. Even if it's only Vodacoms' proxy would it not be wise to move your clients over to https?

Well you can actually use https if you want to but we are not forcing it. We have our reasons for not forcing it. But that is kind of beside the point.

Is Vodacom going to do anyting about this, or maybe give as a workaround in order to get this fixed as it is not really an option for us to to start using https on the whole site or the particular page for that matter.

I think part of the problem might be that the page used to be cached (in error) in the past.

I can PM you the page that is being cached if that would help.

 

[morkhans]

Well you can actually use https if you want to but we are not forcing it. We have our reasons for not forcing it. But that is kind of beside the point.

Is Vodacom going to do anyting about this, or maybe give as a workaround in order to get this fixed as it is not really an option for us to to start using https on the whole site or the particular page for that matter.

I think part of the problem might be that the page used to be cached (in error) in the past.

I can PM you the page that is being cached if that would help.

Best is to get the Vodacom Rep (VodacomData) involved. He can get the guys to do testing and figure out what's going wrong. Check back tomorrow hopefully he'd have commented in the thread.

 

[kingrob]

The HTTPS certificates are not cheap....especially if you are going for the EV ones.

When the Verisign gurlie gave me a call from the UK, I realised that its gonna be more than R50.

 

[Rosaudio]

I had this problem, where my 3G would load up the BBC home page from 17th december. About 3 weeks old so was pretty useless. At least im back on ADSL

 

[VodacomData]

Hi

Pm me a number i can log it on and site/s e.t.c

Regards
VodacomData

 

[BarnettE]

Can you post a link to a page that is not suppose to be cached?

 

[thegrimreaper]

The HTTPS certificates are not cheap....especially if you are going for the EV ones.

When the Verisign gurlie gave me a call from the UK, I realised that its gonna be more than R50.

Yes they are expensive, but we already have ssl certificates for most of our websites, we have other reasons for not using it in this case.

Can you post a link to a page that is not suppose to be cached?

I would rather not post it on a public forum. I have PM'ed VodacomData the info though.

 

[VodacomData]

Hi

It`s easy to bypass the site on our cache server sent through request just waiting on confirmation fairly simple process.

Regards
VodacomData

 

[BarnettE]

I would rather not post it on a public forum. I have PM'ed VodacomData the info though.

I was just going to check your HTTP headers. I assume you did check that and it is not in conflict with the HTML meta tags that you posted?

 

[Johnit]

The Vodacom proxy is not behaving as we would like it; it does not allow forced refresh. HTTPS appears to be the way to go; but it puts a heavy load on the server. I am planning to use a F5 loadbalancer to to the HTTP to HTTPS conversion; this will require some setup and testing.

 

[thegrimreaper]

I was just going to check your HTTP headers. I assume you did check that and it is not in conflict with the HTML meta tags that you posted?

Yes checked that, cant find any issues there, and I guess that if that was the issue we would have had other complaints from clients on other ISP's as well.

 

[thegrimreaper]

Any news on this? Or do I have to call customer care to find out the status?

 

[jamesj]

Have you set the cache headers not to cache on your IIS server?

 

[thegrimreaper]

Have you set the cache headers not to cache on your IIS server?

Nothing is explicitly set to cache or not in IIS, when we use cache it is set on the page itself, and as I said before, if that was the issue other clients not using Vodacom also would have complained about this issue.