Error – User shown as editing multiple pages, when they were never editing those pages and were logged out before the pages were even created.

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Experienced an unusual anomaly today. A user was listed as editing multiple pages in WordPress even though their last login was prior to the pages being created (created by another user). Thankfully this isn’t a security issue as the user account last login was 2 weeks before the pages were created (and complex passwords with 2FA turned on for all users).

The moment the page was created, the user that created the page logged out of WordPress to focus on a different task. Immediately, the same page was then shown as being edited by a user that hadn’t logged in for 2 weeks. I was logged in making changes to another area saw the new page had been created and saw that it was being edited by someone who wasn’t at work and who I knew hadn’t logged in for 2 weeks or so (which I later confirmed). Upon looking further, I could see that the same user was shown as editing 4 other pages at the same time (all created since the user last logged in).

I’m very familiar with WordPress, PhPMyAdmin and MySQL but I’ve never seen this before. It’s a problem as it means pages can’t be edited whilst they are shown as being edited by another user (when they’re definitely not).

I’ve added an inactive user logout plugin to ensure users are logged out after a few minutes of idle time as a potential work around but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Any views, suggestions or other ideas of the cause would greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance for your help.

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