Forum request to update -- update what? Security issue (even though it is likely not)

Issue report
AstroBin Beta Testers •4 replies•20 views
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Linwood Ferguson avatar
Linwood Ferguson avatar

I got an email about a topic update, and clicked it, all good, took me to the right topic.

But on the top right I got an “update available” I have never seen before. It’s odd in two regards — never seen it, but also that it appeared to want an update even though I just opened the page, it wasn’t like I had been sitting there and some page logic was updated in background.

I did not click it. It definitely set of all sorts of security bells in my mind. I’d offer the suggestion that it’s a really bad practice for such things to appear, anything that says ‘click here’ and is out of the ordinary. At worst say “close your browser and log into astrobin again” perhaps, though it is unclear exactly WHAT is being updated that required me to click on anything — this is not an app (despite the name), it’s a web page.

FWIW.

Interestingly when I navigated directly to the forum it didn’t prompt again despite I never did any update.


Linwood

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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar

It's all good and normal. That's intended. AstroBin checks if you're on the latest version of the frontend and prompts you to update by simply refreshing the page, which is what it does when click the prompt.

It's a common thing that I see on several websites that I use.

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Linwood Ferguson avatar
Linwood Ferguson avatar

OK. I’ve only seen it on google messages and only when i sit there for a while, but ok…

However, I did not have astrobin open at the time I got it. I got to astrobin by clicking the link in the email, and the link opened the forum and immediately gave the message.

So the “frontend” doesn’t get loaded when you first open it, it’s loaded from (my? CDN?) cache?

I would not have thought too much about it if I had been sitting on astrobin for a while. I found it odd that on a first-open it would prompt to update.

Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar

Linwood Ferguson · Aug 15, 2025, 07:11 PM

OK. I’ve only seen it on google messages and only when i sit there for a while, but ok…

However, I did not have astrobin open at the time I got it. I got to astrobin by clicking the link in the email, and the link opened the forum and immediately gave the message.

So the “frontend” doesn’t get loaded when you first open it, it’s loaded from (my? CDN?) cache?

I would not have thought too much about it if I had been sitting on astrobin for a while. I found it odd that on a first-open it would prompt to update.

It could've been bad timing! It could also be that your browser caches things too aggressively, or a proxy in the network path. I believe my headers are correct so when you open a page you get the latest immediately, but not all parties respect the headers correctly.

Linwood Ferguson avatar
Linwood Ferguson avatar

Possible. I’m using Edge with no modifications (that I know of) on Windows 11.

I guess if it starts happening immediately more often people will chime in, and if it’s just me, some kind of caching thing.

Thanks.