As some of you may be aware, there's been a number of steps taken lately to enhance security here at deviantART. Some of this has been prompted by the growth of deviantART as a company: the checks and measures that work for a small company start to be outgrown; and some have been in response to community concerns in recent weeks.
Some of the noticeable changes have included rolling out increased use of secure pages (SSL) across the site, the new grace-period on account deactivations, and as of last week, the requirement to confirm your password when changing your email.
What you won't have seen is the behind-the-scenes and lower-profile work that has also been happening, such as the strengthened password requirements that went live two weeks ago and ensuring that the tools that touch your data leave an adequate audit trail. (Exciting stuff!)
Security is an ongoing process, which means that there's more changes coming. In the coming days and weeks we will be making changes "under the hood" that will automatically log you out. This is a side effect of us transitioning to a technology with enhanced internal security: time moves ever on, and while the state-of-the-art from a few years ago may not be insecure today, it's still good to keep up with standards as they improve.
In the coming weeks we will also be soft-launching a reminder on your profile page if your password passed our old security requirements, but has failed the recently enhanced ones. You will not at this time be forced into changing your password, but we recommend that you take the reminder seriously if you see it, and choose a new password with careful thought and the help of
a guide like this one.