unknown error when trying to log in to my sky app

[RahurZZ]

Just been on to Sky Support for 1 hour and 28 minutes to sort out a myriad of problems including this one. They assure me these forums are monitored - in which case could the person monitoring please indicate what is being done about this?

[Jim+Booth]

Doesn't work for me either and still nothing from sky. Not surprising though they have my money and me tied into a contract so why waste time on me a user with issues when they can just concentrate on sucking in more new users 

[MartiniX · Accepted solution]

I had the same thing on the My Sky app and the My Sky web page BUT from the same web page there is a second login further down (just above the bills and payments section) which does work as it goes to a different URL.  I did have a call with Sky to log it but after that I realised the issue myself.

My password contained a percent sign '%'.  When I changed the password to not include a percent (or an ampersand), then the login works.  So basically the issue is just a dodgy bit of encoding in the web page.

So if you do have the 'unknown error' message on the MySky login for the app or web page maybe check the characters in your password so there are no ones which are special to HTML like percent, ampersand, etc.

[RahurZZ]

Brilliant. You are absolutely correct and have identified the issue.

The person further up the thread who thought they had fixed the problem by changing their password must have just happened to change their password from one which did not contain those characters to one that did.

In fact, even if your password does not contain those characters, if you attempt to log in using a password which does contain them, it does NOT return a "wrong password" error - it immediately throws the "unknown error". In other words, the login script cannot deal with the submission of a percent sign in the password - it doesn't even get to checking if the password is correct, it just bombs out.

There you go, Sky. Your shonky programming exposed by your customers. How proud you must be.

[uksimes]

Totally correct. I use a password manager and use it to change my passwords regularly (so even I have no idea what they are!)...I've just checked in the password manager app and looked at the history for skyID.... and the password that was used before I forced a change did indeed include a % sign..... Prior to changing, the password was used for many months, so Sky must have changed something in their code that bombs out passwords which such a symbol in it..

[MartiniX]

Great.  Yes, I use a password mamager as well so long auto generated passwords are probably more common.  I used to design and develop this sort of stuff to an ISO level.  I would guess some marketing person wanted a fancy new landing page for the Sky Glass launch so corners were cut.  Normally this would be picked up during an ethical hack test to check for code and SQL injection which is a little worrying as the implication is a bit wider but let's assume they have that covered (right Sky?)