jmrp

I haven't had EF very long, but I've found that I get the ...Suspicious Activity....Captcha... thing when I execute my saved Upgrade queries too quickly, one after another. If I let my screen completely load 1st (the spinner stops spinning), and then run the next query, I do not get the Captcha msg.

jridge

I've had an EF subscription for a number of years, and I can understand where the OP is coming from.

When you do a seat alert, in a single alert you can nominate any number of specific seats to be notified about, and it is a single alert. It would be great if a similar approach could be used for fare buckets across flights. You're right that it doesn't take *that* long to set up for AA flights (but QF flights using AA miles is not as easy). The biggest impact is that it chews through the number of alerts - looking for a business SAAver award JFK-LHR I'm using 4 alerts per direction per day (and that's excluding BA options). I'm almost always at "zero remaining".

I've assumed this is because the seat info is one query transaction for EF whereas at least on the backend they need to do multiple queries per flight for fare buckets. Obviously they need to manage their infrastructure cost - fair enough. I'm not complaining about the definition of "an alert" as it stands, just saying I can definitely see where OP is coming from.

JDiver

ExpertFlyer is not a tool exclusive to American Airlines, so we will move this thread to the Travel Tools forum. There are threads there dealing with basics and a help desk; the forum Moderators may choose to merge this query into the most appropriate thread.

Moderator

ExpertFlyer Voice

We are looking into making alerts non-flight specific, however we are waiting for our primary information source to be able to show a full days worth of flights in one result set. Without that it becomes complicated and costly to ensure we can alert on any and all flights for a given day. Unfortunately many of our limitations are due to the limitations of the underlying data sources, this is still 60 year old travel tech we are working with.

Zacnlinc

I set seat alerts for seats I have reserved as a way of notifying myself that I was upgraded or moved. Today I was upgraded about 2 hours ago but I've not gotten a seat alert email listing me know the seat is no longer occupied. I even logged into EF to run the script and it reports that the seat is unavailable when it is and has been so for the past 2+ hrs.

Globaliser

What does the seat map say? Does it now show the seat as vacant?

Zacnlinc

ExpertFlyer Voice

You may have not created the alert correctly. If the seat is available but marked as Premium or Paid, and you didn't choose those options for the alert, then it wouldn't alert you. If you email us we can take a look, we can't help you here without seeing the seat map and your alert.

Zacnlinc

Thank you for this minor detail. To me at least, one shouldn't be able to select "specific seats" and expect it to send me an alert if the seats is marked as Premium or Paid. Maybe this feature could be added with a software update. I've updated my other two alerts accordingly.

Pocalypse

I've been getting the 'Suspicious activity detected' / 'Javascript required' pages more and more. It's as much as every 3-4 queries I run, multiple times within 5-10 minutes (and within minutes of me using it on a new day, so I don't think it's an anti-spam thing). And even more annoying, I often get just a blank white page with no message. If I try to refresh, or even close the tab and open a fresh expertflyer.com tab, I get the same white page with no info on it. It takes about 3-5 minutes of not doing anything for something to show up there (and it's the captcha page).

I'm using the same settings I have been for years, chrome 65 with javascript enabled, and ublock origin addon. It happens both at my office and home computers.

It's only started happening this often in the past few weeks, and I haven't changed anything on my end (except possibly updating chrome).

ExpertFlyer Voice

This is the result of your browser or a plug-in (most likely uBlock Origin) blocking our JavaScript. You can try a different browser/device or the private browsing/incognito mode and/or whitelist ExpertFlyer for any add-on that blocks scripts of a website (like uBlock). Nothing has changed on our end recently.

seaskybound

I use VPNs as I travel often to China (but use it all the time for the privacy/security)

The never ending "captcha's" is killing expertflyer usability. Both on PC and smartphone!

I use same browser for all the other websites I use and except for a random captcha here and there (usually when paying for something) I don't have this problem. Hence I assume it is an EF policy not a my setup. Why should I switch browsers?

What is EF worried about? the capthca happens before you even login, that someone will abuse all the free info on your general homepage?

If someone is using your free service, then go ahead and use a captcha. Or your paid service, if over XX queries per hour if you are concerned it is a bot. But why before Login?

I don't use it in incognito mode so why can't you just read a cookie and see I am a paying premium subscriber? (yes the VPN will mean a different IP then usual

Even if someone is using a bot, and there are 5 queries a day (my guesstimated average, jumping to actual 25 a day when researching a flight) what does EF care?? I agree EF does not want full GDS type access for $99 a year nor DOS stuff (like every other website does not want that and does not push captchas, and double captchas and double double captchas at you*)

Frustrating to the highest level. A tool mean to de-frustrate our travel experience (and frankly the absolute most expensive online subscription I have. I guess if I had Netflix it would be 2nd)

* I have to turn a picture of a donkey right side up twice (we wouldn't want to make it easy for those bots that can figure out a donkey easily so have to do it twice) to pass, get in, login, and then a few minutes later, usually my first query, it happens again.

BobbySteel

happens to me. i had to contact them directly.

ExpertFlyer Voice

We're sorry you're having problems, however a few things:

- The system that would show Captcha's sits in front of the website, it isn't part of it, so it has no idea if you are a free or paid member, logged in or not. It is designed to identify non-standard browsers or browsers that don't have JavaScript loaded or fast page loads to detect non-normal behavior to prevent data mining (yes, people have tried).

- This system has been in place for a couple years, and nothing has changed with it recently.

- Certain VPN providers use known abusive data centers as their VPN exit points so that alone will trigger a Captcha (again, as has been the case for a couple years).

- A large amount of quick page loads (of any page) may trigger a captcha.

- When you do solve a Captcha, it should be good for at least 15 minutes. If you get a captcha more often than that, there is an issue with your browser or an add-on (as noted below).

- There is no such thing as a "double captcha". The issue you are describing is caused by one of your browser plugins blocking the cookies and/or JavaScript from our domain which will cause the captchas to happen more often.

- We know that uBlock Origin pushed an update that incorrectly is blocking more of our Javascript beyond ads, so please white-list "expertflyer.com" in uBlock or similar add-ons.

- ....... Plus also recently pushed an update that now has an "Block additional tracking" option. If enabled try turning that off. (We know that ....... normally does not interfere with ExpertFlyer).

- Some browser add-ons change the user-agent string of the browser, making it non-standard. This will also trigger the captcha. This should be turned off for ExpertFlyer.com (again, this has been the case for years).

- If you still need help after taking the above steps, please email us directly at [email protected] with your account information along with the exact trace string from the bottom of the captcha page, your IP address, your browsers user-agent string (What's my user agent?) and a list of browser add-ons you are using.

seaskybound

1. If you look above you will see the complaints are not just from me on this issue.
2. I surf the web all the time a lot, around the world, different wifi sources different VPN servers (though same VPN provider) and it is only your website "that complains". This happens on PC and Phone (same VPN provider though)

I realise you could have a mere $8 a month subscription and get huge amounts of data for that via bots, and that is a risk. But a risk easily mitigated post login (if too much data is asked for at a fast rate) not just because your scripts don't match