[Eril-l] Proquest EbookCentral, single signon, ezproxy - question about weird problem

[Fox, Linda J.]

Hi, Melissa,

We’re seeing a problem that sounds remarkably similar to what you describe.  We’ve harrowed it down to a specific circumstance.  Even though we don’t have to proxy the links to Ebook Central, we choose to do so for the sake of consistency.  We can reliably trigger this behavior if we are logged into our campus network.  We have configured EZproxy not to prompt for credentials when users are on the campus network because they have already authenticated at that point.  So if I follow a proxied link to another database, say Academic Search Complete, I’m automatically “logged in” to the proxy server.  If I then follow a link to Ebook Central, the proxy server “knows” that I’ve already authenticated, and doesn’t prompt me for my username and password.  It instead passes along some sort of generic username—and like you it always seems to be the same one.  If I actually log out of the proxy server and then link to the same ebook, I am prompted to log in, and the username is different.

We have been working with ProQuest on this for months, with no real progress.  I was just thinking about touching base with our EZproxy expert to where the ticket is.  If I learn anything more, I’ll pass it along.

Linda

Linda Fox
Senior Library Information Specialist
UMKC University Libraries
Miller Nichols Library Room 304
800 E 51st Street
Kansas City, MO  64110
https://library.umkc.edu<https://library.umkc.edu/>
(816) 235-5290
fax: (816) 235-5531
foxlj at umkc.edu<mailto:foxlj at umkc.edu>



From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2018 10:18 AM
To: eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: [Eril-l] Proquest EbookCentral, single signon, ezproxy - question about weird problem

Hi, I'm working with Proquest support on this but so far we're confused and I'm hoping someone else ran into this and found a solution.

This would only apply if you have Proquest Ebook Central configured to use their Single SignOn service.  That enables users on campus to get from our ezproxy server (without being bothered to login) a hashed identity code so they can use all of the interface features of someone with an account in the platform, without actually making one and revealing their identity.

What Proquest apparently does is talk to our proxy server, even when the link is not proxied and the user is on campus, to get that hashed identity code. The user is not prompted for a username/password in this, so I'm not sure how ezproxy could even be doing this.

We're finding that multiple users are getting the same hashed identity. The way this showed up is when one staff member used up most of the allocation of pages that could be downloaded, and another staff member on a different computer accessed the same book, they saw the allocation already used up.  They brought it to me, where I verified on my own computer in three different web browsers the same problem.  You can see the problem by looking in settings-profile and note the same hashed-garbage username in all of the affected sessions throughout all those different computers and browsers.

Have any of you seen this before and if so, did you find a solution short of abandoning the SSO service from Proquest?

Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581
my public calendar<http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mbelvadi%40upei.ca&ctz=America/Halifax&mode=week>
Make an appointment<https://mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/>


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