Thank you very much for your patience regarding the recent change we have made to the ARCHI password verification system. We are aware that this may have raised alarm bells in people such as yourself who may have been picked up by the system.
If you are the person who set up an ARCHI subscription, there are a number of reasons why this password might have been picked up by the system. Your internet service provider (ISP) may use a dynamic IP allocation system, which triggers our alert for multiple usage. Or, if you are very mobile when you use ARCHI then the system may pick this up. This is absolutely not a problem and I encourage you to use ARCHI as much as you can to help with your research.
However, we need to protect the system from gross password sharing, which has been on the increase within the ARCHI community for a number of years now. Password sharing has a major impact on the load on the ARCHI website architecture, leading to reduced performance, reduced speed and website crashes. This isn't fair on the users who have taken out a paid subscription. Sharing with your close friend or family member is understandable but those who have been sharing with people further outside that circle has lead to an unintended explosion in over-use. Continued over-use will force us to raise the subscription prices in order to cover the costs associated with supporting these additional users who are not contributing. Personally, I feel obliged to address this now on behalf our valued paying members.
Hence, we hope you are happy that we take measures to address the problem of wide-scale password sharing with ARCHI.