Absolutely, we encourage and support the use of Download Managers!

Download managers (DLM’s) are useful in many situations:

• If you are having problems maintaining extended downloads, getting partial files downloaded instead of whole ones
• If you are on a slow connection like dial-up
• If you want to queue our larger files to download overnight while you sleep or are at work
• If you want to concurrently download several files at once

These are applications that provide a feature called Keep-Alive, which should maintain an open connection and continuous download that overrides any unexpected interruption, and also can resume interrupted downloads should you be disconnected midway through.

When you set up your DLM, please note these points:

• First, you must log into the site and check the “Remember me” box – without this, the required cookie will not be set.
• Your download manager need to be configured to accept cookies from your default web browser (they may do this by default)
• Your web browser may need to be set to explicitly allow cookies from us
• Links to media files are temporary, lasting only 24 hours. If your DLM tries to download a file using a link generated more than 24 hours ago, it will fail.

Recommended Download Managers For PCs

If you’re willing to put up with reminders to buy it, Get Right is free. It’s one of the older more established download managers out there, and works for our site as long as you have cookies enabled. You should be able to use any browser with it.

Firefox has an awesome addon download manager called DownThemAll. Free, simple to install, effective.

Lightning Download Shareware (after 30 days some features are disabled) but inexpensive anyway, Lightning Download seems to work well as long as you have installed a cookie via IE and then set the app to allow cookies.

Recommended Download Managers For Macs

Download Deputy, Speed Download & igetter are not bad, apparently, and each seem to be pretty similar to each other. They all have many useful features and attractive logical interfaces.

Recommended Download Managers For Linux

In Ubuntu 11.10, for firefox the, combination of the
flashgot plugin and the external download manager uGet works very well.

Wget (Linux) (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html) The following, simple option for the Linux/Unix wget command will allow the download of files.

wget –header “Cookie: user=[value]” [file_to_download] Replace the [value] with the cookie value for user, which you can find with your browser’s cookie manager. Of course, replace [file_to_download] with the zip file or video you want to download.

It will also work if you tell it to load your Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox cookie file (cookies.txt).

We hope you’ll share your subscription with your life partner. We have a lot of feedback from members who have done this, and found it to be a great experience. Many people – especially women – once viewing our site, are pleased to see that erotica can be produced with respect and empowerment. But at the same time, we know that some partners are just not accepting of viewing erotica.

Some of our customers want to keep their surfing of our site confidential. There are a number of techniques you can use to do this, depending on the level of privacy required, money available, and technical expertise. Our ideas are listed in rough “easiness” order, easiest first. You can always find out more about these methods by doing Google searches – this is a basic list to give you some ideas of the possibilities.

Warning: many of these methods will not provide confidentiality from children (who tend to know a lot more about computers!) or legal authorities. If viewing our site is not legal in your jurisdiction, you’re on your own! You can read up on the legal standards we meet.  Also, most of these methods work for any adult site or media content, not just ours.

We request you do not make our site available to children of any age, but it is beyond the scope of this FAQ to provide details on how to do this. One good place for help is at http://www.netsmartz.org/InternetSafety.

Pay by cash, instead of credit card

Paying by cash ensures there are no “mysterious” billings to your credit card. However, if you do pay by credit card, your statement will show “GMBILL.COM AMS AW”, or “CCBILL.COM”. More info on our pay-by-mail page.

Do not bookmark our site

Bookmarking our site leaves a clear and obvious link to us from your computer. You could either not bookmark the site at all (make sure you remember our name – you can always google it!).

We encourage everyone to use the separate user function of modern browsers (for example, you log in to your browser account and use it, your wife has her own browser account). This means, your bookmarks (and history, and preferences and cookies, etc) are kept separate from the other person.

Use Chrome web browser, and log in / log out

Recent additions to the excellent Chrome web browser mean that users can log in to the browser, and see all their bookmarks, saved passwords, and so on. When you log out, all the history, bookmarks, cookies, everything “disappears” – securely backed up on Google’s servers, ready for when you next log in to the browser, on any computer.

Clear history

Clearing the “history” when you browse abbywinters.com means the next person who uses the computer cannot see where you have been on the Internet. The browser history can go back many months, and is searchable in most web browsers. Most browsers have a “History” menu, with history options there, or on the web browser’s options page.

If you cannot work it out, do a google search for your browser name and version and “clear history”, like this (note that the version of your browser can affect the instructions):

internet explorer 10 clear history

You can set some browsers to never record your browsing history, or to go
into “stealth mode” (sometimes called “incognito mode”) for particular sites or periods, where no history is recorded. We use and recommend the excellent Chrome web browser, which provides this and many other features.

Don’t save your username and password

Most web browsers, and our web site, offer to remember your username and password, to make it easy for you to log in each time you visit. If you use those tools, you may leave signs of visiting our site. Select “no” when asked by your browser to save your login info.

Delete Cookies

We also provide tools to keep your info each time you visit (review our privacy policy for details on specifics). To remove that from your computer, you must delete abbywinters.com cookies. Cookies help you in a lot of ways, and you will find changes you make on the site – some preferences – will be forgotten if you remove our cookies. However, cookies can also lead a snoop to us. You can set your browser to never accept
cookies from our site. This can be set in the “options” part of your browser, though that will make the site more cumbersome to use.

If you cannot work it out, do a Google search for your browser name and version and “clearing cookies”, like this:

internet explorer 10 clearing cookies

Don’t download, only stream online

If you download and save files to your computer, there will be content on your computer which could easily lead someone to our site – all our images and video have our name on them, for example. You can view our images and video (as streaming, like YouTube) online-only, and make lists and groups of your favourite stuff. That means that you have to be online to view our stuff, and that you may see reduced quality compared to  downloading, but the privacy may be worth it, and the quality-hit is not too bad (depending on the speed of your internet connection).

Create a separate user account on your computer, that only you use

It’s possible to create a separate user account on all modern computers. Your partner logs in on her account, and you log in on yours. The web browser settings will be yours alone (e.g., history, cookies), but any files stored on your computer will still be visible, so some of the methods we describe below should still be used.

This does involve some messing around with computer settings, and is particularly difficult in some operating systems, if you do not know how. Google is your friend.

SHIFT-delete media

If you do download media, after you have watched it out, you can delete it. Deleting, on most computers, puts the media in a “list of things to delete one day” place, and does not actually remove it from your computer. This is useful if you delete something accidentally, and want to get it back – look in your “Recycle bin” or “Trash can” on the desktop of your computer.

However, you can force a complete deletion (bypassing the trash can / recycle bin), by selecting the files, holding down a SHIFT key on your keyboard, then tapping DELETE. Double check by opening the recycle bin, and ensuring the files are not there. If they are, you can select them and tap the DELETE key again, and they will be gone for good.

Note that SHIFT-delete does not make the files impossible to get back – anyone with moderate computer skills (say, a child 12 or older), and an inquisitive mind, will be able to get the files back, if they know they exist. SHIFT-delete protects you from casual browsing of your computer.

If using a Mac, the equivalent is command-shift-delete.

Store downloaded media in a hidden directory

You can store media you download from us in a hidden directory (or, “folder”). Make a new folder somewhere (the less obvious place you store this folder, the safer it is), move media into it, then right click on the folder, select Properties, and check the “hidden” box, then click OK. The folder will disappear – but it’s still there.

To get it back, in Explorer, go to Tools, Folder options, view tab, select “show hidden files and folders”. Anyone can do this, of course, so placing the folder in an out-of-the-way place initially helps. Don’t forget to set this same setting back to “do not show hidden files and folders” when you are done!

Also, don’t forget where you put your special folder – that would be very disappointing!

Store downloaded media in an encrypted partition

There are many programs around that can make an encrypted “partition” of your hard drive. You select the capacity of this partition, and it makes it super-secure (even the CIA would take years to crack it, for example). This is extremely secure, but the presence of the program on your computer may raise questions itself. These programs sometimes have a “stealth mode” to fix this.

There is a minor speed-decrease when using encrypted partitions, but if your computer is reasonably new, this will not be noticeable. The more secure the encryption you use, the bigger the speed decrease.

We recommend TrueCrypt, free and effective. Don’t forget your password – you’ll lose access to your files forever!

View the site on a computer only you use

Buy a brand new computer for your partner, and use your old one “just for tinkering”. Put a password on the BIOS, so only people who know the password can do anything. Lock the computer’s screen, so a password is required before it can be used. Do a google search on “setting BIOS password”.

Download material, store and view it offline

You can download material from our site, then store it offline. This might be on USB sticks – you can get 128Gb ones now, which is a heck of a lot of AW content! – or USB hard drives, which can be 500Gb, run from your USB port, and cost around US$80. Storing this drive somewhere safe is easy and discreet and portable.

Run your whole OS on a USB drive

It’s possible to boot an operating system from a USB flash drive as well. You use this OS for your personal browsing, and everyone else who uses the computer uses the computer’s installed operating system. It can be a fun project (and is very useful if travelling), but requires significant computer skills. Google is your friend!

To receive emails from us, you will need to “whitelist” our email addresses, so your mail program does not assume our messages are spam. It’s best to do this when you first join, so you’re assured of getting all messages from us. We use these email addresses to send / reply to you:

• support@abbywinters.com
• accounts@abbywinters.com
• abby@abbywinters.com
• bugreport@abbywinters.com
• support@gmbill.com

Because there are many mail providers, and they are upgraded all the time, rather than provide instructions here, we have linked to some search results. If your Mail provider is not listed, simply do a Google search for:

how do I whitelist a sender in yahoo mail

Here are some of the most common email providers, with links to search results:

Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, AT&T, Yahoomail, SBCGlobal, Outlook, Outlook Express, MobileMe.

A trace route is a command run on your computer that sends a small file to an internet server that you specify. It shows the path that file takes, the names of each computer it touches, and the time it takes from each computer to the next one. It’s an extremely useful  anaytic tool to find problems between your computer and a place on the internet (more info).

ABOVE: An example of the file that you’ll send to us – this is what a “traceroute” looks like.

For Microsoft Windows

For Windows (any version), you’ll be opening a “old school” DOS prompt, typing in some commands, the result will be written to a file, and you’ll send the file to us (you can look at the file to see what’s in it, too).

You may wish to print this instructions page, so you do not have to keep swapping windows around.

Open a DOS command prompt

START menu, Run…, type “cmd” without the quotes (or “command” if you’re using anything older than Windows 7). A black window will open up with a flashing cursor. Very 1991, eh? 🙂

ABOVE: The black window opens, called a command prompt, where we can give instructions directly to the computer.

If you see the Access denied error message, it’s because Administrator access is required. After writing “cmd”, instead of hitting ENTER (or clicking “run”), instead press CTRL-SHIFT+ENTER. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, click Continue. You should see the black window now?

Enter the traceroute command

Enter the following command. It has to be exact, letter for letter, space for space.

It’s best to copy-and-paste, but to paste into the DOS command line window, use ctrl-INS (ctrl-v will not work).

tracert -d -w 1 cdn.abbywinters.com > c:\abbytracecdn.txt

Press the ENTER key. Not much appears to happen (we’re sending the output of the command to a file, so it’s easy to send to us, but that means the output is not displayed on screen). After a 30 to 60 seconds, you’ll go back to the DOS prompt with a flashing cursor.

ABOVE: The command has been pasted in to the command line, and enter was pressed. It takes about 30 secondws for the command to run. We know it worked, because there are no errors, and the system is ready for the next command.

If you see an “Access denied” error message, type “exit” to close the command prompt, and use the technique described above in “If you see the Access denied error message…”.

Close the command prompt window

You’re done here! Type “exit”, press ENTER, the black screen will go away.

Review the file

Let’s check the file actually has useful info in it!

1. Open Explorer (Windows-e)
2. Click on Local disk (C:) Drive in the left panel
3. Look for this file, created in a previous step; abbytracecdn.txt
   1. See screenshot below for an example
4. Double click on the file, it will open in Notepad (a text editor)
5. Keep the file open for the next step.

In the file, you’ll see a bunch of web addresses and numbers and stuff in it (see image at the top of this page, but yours will have different numbers).

ABOVE: Locating traceroute the file created (1) Select the C: drive (2) the abbytracecdn.txt file. Double click to open.

Send us the info in the file

We need to see what’s in the file, to help us diagnose the problem. We’ll copy the text from the traceroute, and paste it into an email to us. Continuing on from the previous step;

1. Select all the text in the traceroute files
   1. Hold down the CTRL (“control”) button on your keyboard, and tap the “A” key.
   2. This is a shortcut to “Select all”. The text will go white, and the background black. Let go of the CTRL key.
2. Copy the traceroute report
   1. Hold down CTRL again, and tap the “C” key, then let go of the CTRL key. This will copy that stuff into your computer’s memory.
   2. If it all disappears and is replaces with the letter c, you need to hold down CTRL again, and tap the Z key – this will undo the last action. Go back to step 1 above, and try again.
3. Reply to the email where we asked you for a traceroute, say hello
4. Paste the traceroute report
   1. Hold down the CTRL key, and tap the V key. Your traceroute info should appear there as if by magic. Let go of the CTRL key.
5. Send the email to us, and we will investigate from there.

Sometimes you need to know what your settings are for your computer, especially if you wish to compare with the minimum settings a website may suggest, or if you wish to alter them to fit an update in technology.

PCs

Right-click on your desktop and choose Properties. Under Settings there will be an adjustable slider that shows your Screen Resolution as a width-height ratio. The default in XP is 800×600, our minimum specs recommend 1024×768. Ideally you would want 1280×960 at least to see our images fit the screen dimensions better.

Some CRT monitors and video cards do not allow some resolutions to display without also adjusting the refresh rate frequency to accommodate flickering. To do this go to Advanced and choose the Monitor tab, where you can choose a Hertz frequency. The higher the number, the less flickery the screen will be.

Macs

Choose the Apple menu System Preferences, and then Displays. There will be choices of screen ratios available. Our minimum specs recommend 1024×768. Ideally you should use 1280×1024 at least to see our images fit the screen dimensions better.

Make a screenshot

For MS Windows

1. Set up your screen to show what you want to capture
2. In Windows 7 or later, go to the Start menu and type “Snip” – the Snipping Tool will show up, start it.
   1. 
3. In Win7 and 8, the screen will appear “washed out” immediately, and the pointer will be a cross-hairs. In Win 10, click “New” to start a new screen cap – the screen looks “washed out”, and is ready for a screen capture to be made
4. Click to select the top left corner of the screen you want to capture, drag to the bottom right, let go. The captured portion of the screen is shown in Snipping Tool. If a mistake is made, simply click New to start over.
5. The screen capture is automatically copied to memory, and so can be pasted into an email directly.  Or, to save a copy of that image, File menu, Save As. Save it as a jpg file in your My Documents folder, or perhaps on your Desktop.
6. Drag the resulting image to attach it to an email, or attach it to a Boards post

In Mac OSX:

1. Set up your screen to show what you want to capture
2. Press CMD-SHIFT-4 (to capture an area of the screen); the mouse pointer changes to crosshairs
3. Drag to select an area. While dragging, you can hold the Shift key, Option key, or Space bar to change the way the selection moves.
   1. 
4. When you’ve selected the area you want, release your mouse or trackpad button. To cancel, press the Escape (esc) key before you release the button.
5. Find the screenshot as a .png file on your desktop.

Attach the file to a boards post

This is not necessary, it may be more suitable to contact our Customer Support department with the screenshot, in which case, attach it to an email.

1. At the Quick Reply box at the bottom of each thread page is the “Go Advanced” button. Click it.
2. On the next page that loads, hit the “Manage Attachments” button.
3. On the popup window that appears hit the “Browse” button and find the jpeg file you previously saved from above.
4. Then hit the “Upload” button and wait while it uploads. When the image is ready hit the “Close this window” button in the popup window.
5. You now should be back in the forum so add text to your reply and then hit the “Submit Reply” button.
6. Your new post should now have a screenshot in it.

Apple’s decision not to support Adobe Flash has caused tremendous problems for video sites all over, and we’re no different. However, we have taken a few steps to make this work well, but the iPad is very finicky, so you need to follow these instructions precisely. There are two methods, that give similar results.

Method 1

1. Log into the site
2. Go to a shoot page. Our site will detect you’re using an iOS (Apple)
   device, and make some slight changes to the page and your prefernces.
3. To the right of the video thumbnail, you see a series of radio
   buttons (LQ, SQ, HQ, and HD), signifying quality settings. Select LQ.
4. Click the Download MP4 link below the video, the video will start playing

Method 2

1. Log into the site
2. Go to a shoot page. Our site will detect you’re using an iOS (Apple) device, and make some slight changes to the page and your prefernces.
3. On a video panel (the panel with the clapper-board logo), click once on the thumbnail icon. It will go black for a moment, the page might flicker, and the image will change. Wait around 10 seconds, while the video “buffers” (loads the first part). You may see a “play” icon while it buffers – remain patient!
4. A tiny version of the video will start playing: you’ll see a black bar at the bottom, with a pause button, and a “expand” icon. If the black bar disappears, touch the video once, it will re-appear.
5. Click the expand icon to make it full-screen, or de-pinch the small video.

Applies to both methods
Once the video is full-screen, there are a few options, supplied by the iOS video player (so, these controls are common to any video you play on your device). Touch the video playing once to acces them. From the top:

• Click “Done” to close the video. Unfortunately, this closes the Safari browser as well – start it again, and you’ll be back where you were.
• The scrub bar lets you drag the “pip” along the timeline, to find the bits you like the most. Usually only takes a few seconds to start the video again from the new point. Neat trick: wile scrubbing left-to-right, drag down /up to control the speed of scrubbing.
• The “expand” button makes the video full-screen, but cuts off the sides of the video (as all our newer videos are 16:9 aspect ratio), so is not recommended.
• At the bottom, clicking the “track skip left” button takes you to the start of the video. “Track skip right” takes you to the end of the video (not very useful).
• The play / pause button works as expected.
• Adjust the volume to suit your preference.
• Clicking the shrink button should return you to the page the video is on, but unfortunately does not: it exits to the desktop, and you need to start Safari again.
• Pinching to return to the page does work fine, however

Known issues

• This does not work on iPhone 3’s, regardless of the iOS version. Sorry – talk to Apple!
• You cannot save videos to your iPad, as far as we know. But do tell us if you work out a way!
• You can try downloading the HD version of the video (select the HD option on the right, click the MP4 link), but it does not work so well, because MP4 relies on the devices CPU to decode, and iPad1 CPU’s are not beefy enough). Your milage may vary – there is a noticable increase in image quality.

To see the security code you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It is also possible that you’re behind a proxy server, firewall, or you’re running your own firewall or security software such as Zone Alarm, Norton Internet Security, etc. If this is the case you’ll need to adjust your settings to allow access to abbywinters.com.

Cannot view profiles on a Mac using Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer for Macs has not been supported by either Apple or Microsoft for many years. It has therefore not been upgraded while new developments in web technology have advanced. As our site uses cutting edge technology in some of its design, IE for Macs no longer cuts the mustard.

To view our site correctly, you need a modern browser. We recommend Firefox or Safari, and some have suggested Camino. They are free to download, and are much better browsers than IE in all ways, including increased security, greater usability, and they are constantly kept up to date with newer web developments. You will not regret this change.

On OS9, my browser just isn’t working with your site at all
We do not really support OS9, as mentioned in our Minimum Specs, so the best we can offer is a single browser that will work acceptably, which is Mozilla 1.2.1. We have provided a copy for download.

Cannot log on to your site – I’m stuck with the logon dialog
It is very important to set your browser to enable Javascript and accept cookies. Our identification system is cookie based and if your browser doesn’t accept them you will not be able to log on. You can access this setting via the “Preferences” menu of your browser.

Also, make sure your browser is up to date (check out the Minimum Specs), and try hitting the refresh button (or hit Command+R/Apple+R) when you’re at the main page.

It is also a good idea to check the “remember me” check box, so you won’t have to log on every time you visit us.

Cannot playback videos on Safari with Quicktime 7
When you click on a video link in Safari, expecting the video to playback on Quicktime 7, and instead you get a question mark and nothing seems to happen, this fault lies not with us, but with Safari’s Quicktime plugin.

Streaming our video is not recommended, as we do not use proper streaming servers, they are file servers only. These are MPEG-1 video files, not Quicktime MOV files, and the plugin has a bug that does not seem to like them.

There are several solutions:

1. Our recommended suggestion is for you to ctrl-click and download the videofiles, or use a Download Manager, so you can play them back from your hard drive at your leisure. (option-click the link to bypass the list of options and go straight to downloading)
2. Alternatively you can use a different browser, Firefox, in which the Quicktime 7 plugin seems to work just fine.
3. Or you can try to eliminate one of the plugin files in Safari. Go to the folder “~/library/Internet Plug-ins” and delete the file: “Quicktime Web Plugin”. You will see two Quicktime plugins there, the one you delete is the one with the word “web” in its name. Simply pull that plugin out, restart the computer, and video streaming should return to normal within browser windows.

We take security seriously – both of our site, and your data.

We do not know your password: once you enter it into the form when joining (or, accepting the pre-selected one), it’s encrypted. When you go to log in, we encrypt the password you typed / pasted in using the same method as the original, then compare them. If they are the same, we let you in, if not, we do not.

When going to log in to abbywinters.com, there is a “Forgot password?” link on the sign-in window.

ABOVE: (1) Forgot password link, lets you reset your password yourself.

You’re asked to enter your username. If our system has that username on file, we send an email to the associated email address on file, with a link to reset the password (or email may be in your Spam folder – check there if you do not see the email after 60 seconds or so). More details on that process in the FAQ How do I reset my password?

If you joined by CCBill (less unlikely – check your credit card statement), you can go to their account lookup page, or contact their Support department there. They have 24/7 support, and you could also call them.

Windows Media Player reports, “Cannot play the filetype…”

Windows Media Player is probably one of the worst video players ever made – and with every release of Windows, it seems to get worse still! Due to complicated licensing arrangements and trying to “please everybody”, Microsoft seem to have stymied themselves.

It’s possible to download and install plugins (some are paid) to make Windows Media Player “better”, but it’s far easier to install a new program that simply does it all “out of the box”.

The free, excellent, reliable, fast, small and simple VLC is what you really need. Download it here: http://www.videolan.org/

Stuttering, jerky playback

If Streaming: The internet connection between our servers and yourself is not fast enough.

• Try streaming a lower quality
• Try letting the video “buffer” – click play, then pause, and watch the grey bar advance. When it has advanced to about 50%, click play again.
• Try streaming later – internet speeds can fluctuate (more details can be found on this FAQ page: How come it’s slow to download from your site?)
• It may be that your internet connection can never support streaming videos. You will need to download videos instead.

If Download: There’s a problem with your computer.

• MP4 videos require a lot of computing power (CPU) to “decode” and play back, compared to other formats. Try downloading a lower quality MP4, as smaller files require less CPU to decode.
• It’s possible (but unlikely), you have something else running on your computer using a lot of CPU power – stop that and try playing the videos again
• WMV videos also require computing power to decode, though much less than MP4
• MPG videos require the least computing power to play back, and so will almost definitely work (but the file size is larger, and the quality lower)
• It’s possible the playback software is not doing a good job. We use and recommend the free, safe, easy, reliable and amazing VLC.
• Your video card may be mis-configured, or not have drivers installed. Download and install the latest drivers from the manufacturer

Audio plays back but with no video, just a black screen

If Download:

• The playback software does not support the video codec (the way the video has been prepared by us). Download and install VLC or choose a different video file type (MPG, WMV). If you are using VLC, it may be a very old version – download the new version to upgrade.
• This also occurs when using some laptops with an external monitor connected, video will not play back on the attached monitor. Closing VLC and restarting it on the other monitor, then dragging the video in to it may work, but it also may not. Upgrading your display drivers may resolve this, or it may just be a limitation of your laptop.

No audio on playback

If Streaming:

• Make sure the volume adjustment on the player is not too low, and not muted (speaker icon with a line through it)
• Check the volume control on your computer
• Check if other things on your computer make a sound
• Check if other abbywinters.com videos play back with audio

If Download:

• Check the volume control on your computer
• Check if other things on your computer make a sound
• Check if other AW videos play back

This information is recommended to be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy.

A “cookie” (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website (more info on Wikipedia).

Almost all websites use cookies extensively.

The first time a user visits…

Some cookies are set the first time a user performs an action (for example, visiting our site the first time). Computers sometimes interpret “first time” in unexpected ways. For example, if you visit our site today in the Chrome web browser, and tomorrow in the Firefox web browser, your computer and our site will consider both of these visits to be the “first time” in the context of cookie setting.

Similarly, clearing all cookies (or, all abbywinters.com cookies) will cause your browser to think that it’s the first time you have visited any site (or, just our site).

The difference between first-party and third-party cookies

We draw a distinction between third-party cookies, and first-party cookies.

First-party cookies are set by the site for the site – that is, abbywinters.com sets a cookie for a user of abbywinters.com to make the site nicer to use for that user.

Third-party cookies are set by a different site. In our case, we allow sites like Google Analytics to set cookies for users on abbywinters.com. We let people opt-out of third-party cookies being set.

All first-party cookies we set for Customers last for one year, based on the preferences of the user (Guests get default values set).

Declining third-party cookies

Note, opting out of cookies only opts out of third-party cookies – first-party cookies are still set, as they are essential to accessing our website.

Guests are asked if they want to allow third party cookies when they first visit the site.

ABOVE: The location of the cookie decline / accept interaction.

If third-party Cookies are accepted initially but later the Guest user wants to decline them, easiest is to delete all cookies for abbywinters.com (varies by Browser, make a web search for “delete cookies Firefox” for example). On the next visit to abbywinters.com, you’ll be asked if you want to allow third-party cookies or not – select “Decline”.

Paying customers can opt-out of third party cookies in their preferences; Be logged in to abbywinters.com. In the user Control panel top right, select My Account, Preferences, General tab, Disallow third-party cookies.

First-party cookies we set

recently_visited

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

This cookie stores the 10 most-recently visited pages on abbywinters.com, to show on our page – this is sometime called “breadcrumbs”, so it’s easy to go back a few steps. We are phasing this feature out in our site redesign. We’ll likely retain this cookie as it’s useful for customer support reasons.

No user data is stored, just the most recently visited URL’s on the abbywinters.com site. If a user submits a customer support ticket, those URLs are listed in the ticket to allow us to support the user better.

This cookies is set the first time the user visits our site, and is deleted when all tabs for our website are closed.

ageverify

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

When they first visit our site, we ask users to confirm they are over the age of 18. If the user selects “Enter”, we set a value of “1” so the user is not asked this question again.

This cookie is set the first time a visitor arrives on any page of our site.

No user data is stored in this cookie.

ABOVE: What the age verify modal looks like.

dl_quality

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

This cookie sets the user’s preference for default video download quality. No user data is stored in this cookie, just a simple identification of the preferred video quality, for example, “HD_MP4”.

Guests receive the default setting, and cannot alter this option.

This cookie is updated when the Customer changes their preference.

image_dl_quality

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

This cookies sets the user’s preference for the default image download quality. No user data is stored in this cookie, just a simple identification of the preferred video quality, for example, “XL”.

Guests receive the default setting, and cannot alter this option.

This cookie is updated when the Customers changes their preference.

tv_m, tv_time

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

These cookies are used to store a user’s preferences regarding Tagging videos, micro-videos we pop-up from time to time showing our models encouraging users to add meaningful tags to the site.

No user data is stored, only integers relating to the user’s preference for how often we display these videos to the user.

Guests receive the default setting, and cannot alter this option.

This cookie is updated when the Customers changes their preference.

video_dl

Applies to: Guests; Customers.

This cookie allows the user to choose if they prefer to download or stream videos, when clicking on a video download link. We provide excellent video streaming options, so this is rarely used, but some weirdos like it…

Guests receive the default setting, and cannot alter this option.

No user data is stored in this cookie, just the word “download” or “stream”.

This cookie is updated when the Customers changes their preference.

user

Applies to: Customers only.

This cookie stores the user’s session ID, so the user is not asked for their username and password on each page they visit on our site (that’d be super annoying!). When the user reloads the page or follows a link we re-check this cookie and re-authenticate user.

Contained in this cookie is the user’s username and encrypted password (more info on how we keep your data secure).

This cookie is first set when a Customer logs in.

Third party cookies set when visiting abbywinters.com

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. The details of each cookie set are described on Google’s page for this. All data is anonymised.

Data gathered by google analytics is listed on Google’s page for this, under the heading “The GIF Request Parameters” towards the bottom of the page.

If you join and have problems viewing our content, we will not be able to offer support or issue a refund unless your system is above minimum spec. Cookies must be enabled; Javascript must be enabled; Anonymous Proxies are not supported (but may work).

PC minimum specification

• Celeron class processor or better
• At least 256 MB of RAM
• 150Mb free HDD space on your C (or swap) drive
• 1024×768 screen resolution
• 512kbps broadband connection to Internet
• Windows 7 or higher
• Chrome (latest)
• Firefox (latest)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer (latest)
• Windows Media Player (latest)

PC recommended specification

• i5 processor
• 4Gb RAM
• 24″ monitor
• 1280×1024 resolution
• Chrome browser (latest version)
• VLC media player

Mac minimum specification

• A PowerPC G3 or higher, or an Intel Core2 Duo or higher
• At least 256 MB of RAM
• 150Mb free HDD space on your main drive
• 1024×768 screen resolution
• 128kbps broadband connection to Internet
• OS X 10.4 or higher
• Chrome (latest)
• Firefox (latest)
• Safari (latest)
• Quicktime 6.0
• MPEG1 codec installed

Mac recommended specification

• OSX (most recent release)
• MacBook (2014 or more recent)
• MacBook Air (2014 or more recent)
• iMac (2014 or more recent)
• Chrome browser (latest version)

While the site might work on a lower hardware or software spec, we do not support it.

iPhone and Android

All key pages (Tour, Join, News, Browse, Model, Shoot, Video, Image, Fetish) of our site work well on the latest version of the iOS and Android operating systems.

Some videos may not play back on some devices.

Tablets

Cheaper tablets with limited hardware specs (Eg Amazon Fire) may not work work well.

Smart TV’s

Smart TV’s based on the Firefox web browser should work, but may not. This technology is not reliable and so is not supported fully yet.

To see the security code you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It is also possible that you’re behind a proxy server, firewall, or you’re running your own firewall or security software such as Zone Alarm, Norton Internet Security, etc. If this is the case you’ll need to adjust your settings to allow access to abbywinters.com.

abbywinters.com has been tested and is expected to work well on modern updated web browsers.

PC:

• Chrome (latest version) Recommended.
• Firefox (latest version)
• Microsoft Edge

Mac (OSX):

• Chrome (latest version) Recommended.
• Safari (latest version)
• Firefox  (latest version)

Other browsers may work, but are not guaranteed to. If you have problems, we may not be able to support you.

If you’re not using the latest version of the browser, please update before lodging a support request (Help menu, About… update).

Some people use automated computer programs to attempt to break in to our site. To counteract this practice we ask you to prove you’re a human, using a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

Automated computer programs can’t “read” the letters and numbers you see in the box, only humans can. When you enter this code (which changes on every page load), it ensures that your login is entered by a real person. This works as a deterrent to hackers – when they see there is a CAPTCHA test, they simply look for lower-hanging fruit.

If you’re not sure what the code is, make your best guess. If you’re incorrect, you’ll get another chance to enter a different word on the next screen.

You need to type the black letters and numbers into the blank box (pdahb in the example below). It does not matter if you type it in lowercase or uppercase. Do not enter spaces between the letters.

These letters will change each time you reload the page or click the refresh icon below “I can’t read this”. After four minutes, you will need to reload the page or refresh the letters to get a new security code, as they do expire. If you try to log in with an expired code, you’ll be asked to log in again.

If you’re having problems reading the security code, and you’re using Windows, using the built-in “Magnifier” tool might help you.

Click on the Start menu, type Magnifier, and set it to the “lens” mode, a small handy tool that zooms in on an area around the mouse pointer. Set at about 200%, it should be perfect for you!

Cookies are useful – if we did not use cookies, you’d be asked to enter your username and password for every image and every video you looked at. This would become very annoying!

Here’s a list of all the cookies we set, and why we set them.

Cookies are good!

We use cookies to help you access the site smoothly. We also use cookies to remember settings you make, like how many thumbnails per page, and if images open in a new window or not.

If you suspect you’re having cookie issues, to do things in this order (if the first thing in the list does not fix your problem, move on to the next item in the list, and so on):

1. Deleting old cookies (may be corrupt)
2. Enabling cookies in your browser
3. adjust firewall settings

Deleting old cookies

If you have problems logging in, it may help to delete all cookies associated with this website.

Chrome

Make sure you have your username and password handy – you were emailed this when you first joined.

In Chrome, select the Hamburger menu, Settings, search for “cookie”, select “Content Settings” button, then “All cookies and site data” button.

Internet Explorer

1. From the browser menu: Tools / Options / General / Temporary Internet Files / Settings / View Files(Internet explorer 7 users -From the browser menu: Tools / Options / General / Browsing history / Settings / View Files)
2. A window will open with a lot of filenames in it. Click on ‘Name’ to list them alphabetically.
3. You are looking for files named like this:Cookie:user@abbywinters.comCookie:user@abbywinters.com/Cookie:user@www.abbywinters.comCookie:user@www.abbywinters.com/where ‘user’ is the user logged in to Windows (your Windows username)
4. Right-click on each and choose delete.

Enabling cookies

Cookies must to be enabled to browse this site as a member. Cookies are enabled on your web browser by default, but you may have turned them off by mistake, or deliberately. If you did it by mistake, here’s info on how re-enable them.

If you did it deliberately, you will need to enable cookies specifically for this site (see below).

Enable cookies in Chrome

1. In Chrome, select the Hamburger menu, Settings, search for “cookie”, select “Content Settings” button
2. Remove the check-mark from “Block all third-party cookies and site data”.
3. Clicked Finished.

Enable cookies in Firefox

1. Go to the Tools menu
2. Select “Options…”
3. Click on the Privacy icon
4. In the “Cookies” section, check the “Accept cookies from sites” box
5. Click OK

Enable cookies in Internet Explorer

1. Go to the Tools menu
2. Select “Internet Options…”
3. Go to the Privacy Tab
4. Click the “Advanced…” button
5. UN-check “Override automatic cookie handling”, Click OK
6. Set the slider to “Medium”
7. Click OK

Adjust Firewall

You may also need to adjust your software firewall (for example, Norton Firewall, or Zone Alarm) or ad blocking software. You need to explicitly allow “abbywinters.com” (exactly that, without the quotes). As there are so many different types of these, we cannot provide specific instructions, but you’re looking for something like “exceptions” or “allow”.

Let us know if you still have problems.

Why are the images are so darn big?

All the images on this site are around 1280×960 or 1470×980 pixels for large size images and 3504×2336 for XL images. When viewing images through the new site these images are automatically re-sized in your browser to fit your screen resolution and size of your browser window.

If you wish you can click on the image to view the full image in the browser or right-click and click “save image as” if you want to save it to your harddrive.

You can also select your preferred size for images from the preference in the my account page. This will affect the size of image that is loaded by default when browsing images and also the image that is downloaded when clicking on the download image icon (disk icon) on the image page. If you have selected XL as your preferred size and an imageset is not available with XL images it will default back to Large image size for that set.

Resizing images in a browser can result in lower quality images – they often distort and cause jaggy edges – so we recommend you download the images first (by zip, if you want more than several), and use an image viewing program on your computer.

Image viewers have many advantages over a web browser. There are many viewers to choose from, but we recommend IrfanView (free), or Windows / MacOS’s inbuilt viewer (both free). Some other suggestions from our members can be found in this thread on our discussion boards.

The simplest way to see the complete picture in your chosen image viewer is to use “Fit Image To Screen”. Most viewers can achieve this “on the fly” using a keyboard shortcut (e.g. in ACDSee it’s Ctrl and Numpad minus), and you can set this to be the default.

Your chosen image viewing application should come with a comprehensive Help file that will guide you through everything, but we have a lot of very knowledgeable members who will be happy to help you if you post on our discussion boards.

Why do I keep getting a page that says I need to log in again?

If you’ve logged into the site, but keep getting nagged to log in when trying to download images or videos, it indicates that your abbywinters.com cookies are stale or corrupted. What you need to do is delete your AW cookies and log in again by entering your username and password on the Home page.

ABOVE: What a suspension notice looks like. 🙁

We suspend user accounts when there are eight unsuccessful login attempts.

If this was you

If this was you trying to log in, you probably want to find your password. We also recommend copying and pasting passwords in (rather than typing them), to ensure there are no mistakes.

See below for what to do next.

If this was not you…

If you did not try and fail to log in 8 times, this will be caused by hackers trying to break into our site with your account. They know your username (attackers keep enormous lists of known usernames, millions and millions of them), and try other enormous lists of passwords against our system to try to break in.

This is usually futile, as there are so many possible combinations they use a computer program to try to log in many times, and we have the “I am not a robot” test for this very reason. But, attackers are not so smart, sometimes try it, and the result can be, a customers account gets suspended.

Another possibility is that attackers know your username and password from another site where you used the same combination, and that site got “cracked” (attackers broke in an stole a list of all usernames and passwords, guessing that some users will use the same credentials for other sites).

The net result is the same, your account is suspended.

A note on password security

For the reasons above, it’s strongly recommended to use a different password for every site you use online. Of course, that’s a real pain to remember, but there are some good free software tools to help manage this easily. We use and recommend LastPass at HQ.

Typically, accounts that have this problem have simple passwords. We strongly recommend using stronger passwords. You know the ones – upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols). DinoPass is meant for passwords for kids, but is pretty good at suggesting memorable passwords (however, security is improved if you capitalise some of the letters in the password they recommend).

What do I do now?

You can contact us and ask us to un-suspend your account, or wait 24 hours from when you first saw this message, for your account to be unlocked automatically.

If attackers have used your account, it’s likely it will become locked again and again as they keep trying to use it. In these cases, we recommend changing your username as well – we will do this for you, but if you have a strong opinion on what you want the new username to be, let us know when you contact us (but, it’s not appropriate to just add “1” to the end of it – the more different it is, the safer it is!).