How to Prevent Users from Sharing Passwords in WordPress
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 9:45 am
By default, a WordPress user can log into an account from multiple locations at the same time. This can compromise the security of your multi-author WordPress site and reduce your profits if you run a membership site. In this article, we'll show you how to prevent password sharing in WordPress by blocking simultaneous logins.
Before we go any further, we should talk a little about how WordPress handles user sessions. Like many other web applications, WordPress uses cookies to identify a logged in user. These cookies do not contain your password, only your username and a special key as proof that you knew the password.
Now, if you access your website from a public location and out of habit enable the “Stay logged in” button, anyone from that computer will be able to log into your website because WordPress allows the same username to be logged in from two different locations.
Not only is this problematic from a security perspective, but it can also negatively impact your business if you run a membership site that sells premium content.
Users can easily share their password with their friends and use the same login details to consume your paid content.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could prevent users from logging into the same account from multiple locations?
When a user recently asked us this question, list of bosnia and herzegovina cell phone number we looked around and found a plugin that prevents simultaneous logins.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Prevent Concurrent Logins plugin. It is ready to use right out of the box and there are no settings you need to configure.
You can test the plugin in action by logging into your WordPress website from two different browsers on your computer or by using private/incognito mode.
If you try to log into your website using the same username and password in the second browser, you can log in successfully, but the plugin will end the old session and when you click on a link in the previous browser window, you will be redirected to the login page.
That's it. We hope this article helped you learn how to prevent password sharing in WordPress by blocking simultaneous logins. You may also be interested in our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress with Simple History.
Before we go any further, we should talk a little about how WordPress handles user sessions. Like many other web applications, WordPress uses cookies to identify a logged in user. These cookies do not contain your password, only your username and a special key as proof that you knew the password.
Now, if you access your website from a public location and out of habit enable the “Stay logged in” button, anyone from that computer will be able to log into your website because WordPress allows the same username to be logged in from two different locations.
Not only is this problematic from a security perspective, but it can also negatively impact your business if you run a membership site that sells premium content.
Users can easily share their password with their friends and use the same login details to consume your paid content.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could prevent users from logging into the same account from multiple locations?
When a user recently asked us this question, list of bosnia and herzegovina cell phone number we looked around and found a plugin that prevents simultaneous logins.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Prevent Concurrent Logins plugin. It is ready to use right out of the box and there are no settings you need to configure.
You can test the plugin in action by logging into your WordPress website from two different browsers on your computer or by using private/incognito mode.
If you try to log into your website using the same username and password in the second browser, you can log in successfully, but the plugin will end the old session and when you click on a link in the previous browser window, you will be redirected to the login page.
That's it. We hope this article helped you learn how to prevent password sharing in WordPress by blocking simultaneous logins. You may also be interested in our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress with Simple History.