Play vs. friend spectator bug still not fixed

When I send the play vs. friend link to someone, or they send it to me, regardless of browser, the player who is accepting the challenge views as a spectator, not an opponent. There was a thread about this before, but I can't find it. This is immensely frustrating. Any chance of a fix soon? I love lichess, but it's a major pain to be limited to playing against anonymous users, who are usually well out of my league and/or cheating.

The link is only usable once. No one must visit the link before your friend follows it or it becomes invalid.

That isn't the problem here. It has been a bug for a while now, your friend goes to the link and is made a spectator, and you're playing against nobody. Makes lichess unusable and it's a real shame.

Yes it's been reported. thibault is revising the security check for permissions on entering a game.

In the meantime, it helps if your friend isn't clicking a link to join the game, but copying and pasting the raw text URL you give him. There is a chance that might solve the problem; when links are clicked it attaches other permission info it sends to the server here. Personally I've never had this issue when copying and pasting someone else's URL for me to join it.

I think this has something to do with the expliot of giving another player the URL to let him make the moves for you.
Thibbi fixed it, however now ppl struggle to send invites to friends.

I added a join confirmation screen, which should fix the issue.

Thanks, thibault!

thanks! will check it out