Auto logout loses your content if not saved

[cucocreative]

Not sure if this is a bug or by design, but it's annoying.

I was in the middle of building (actively working on) up a large menu when the "Are you human" modal popped up, followed by the login form. After login, I went to save the menu and I got the "Link no longer valid" error. So my only option was to refresh the page which meant losing all my work.

I'd imagine that this would happen if I was in the middle of writing a post/page also - which would have been even more frustrating.

I know that this is done for security reasons, which is fine, but there should be mechanism to stop you looking you unsaved content when it happens.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi there, welcome to WordPress Trac! Thanks for the report.

WordPress core does not have an "Are you human" modal, it probably comes from a plugin or browser extension.

Please try the ​support forums if you'd like to get help with finding where exactly that modal comes from.

[cucocreative]

I've just seen it again this morning on a site I've remained logged into for a few days now.

Looking at the code from the modal, it includes the id "wp-auth-check" which seems to be part of a function that check whether a user is still logged in, for the heartbeat. ​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_auth_check/
also this
​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_auth_check_html/
appear to be the code for the modal box I'm seeing.

The url in the modal includes "wp-login.php?interim-login=1". The variable $interim_login seems to be set TRUE when the log-in session of a user expires while they are working in the back end. In this case a message asking to log in again appears.

The issue is not with the "Are you human" part but when you are auto logged out when you are in the middle of editing a page - you loose any unsaved work - it would be better to do an auto-save before logging you out.