The customer reported that after being idle in Confluence for a couple of hours, their session expires. Upon attempting to search, they encounter errors instead of being able to access the search functionality, even though some spaces are configured for anonymous access.

• Confluence Cloud allows anonymous access to certain spaces, but expired sessions for logged-in users trigger errors when performing actions like search.
• The system continues to send expired authentication tokens after session expiry, instead of automatically treating the user as anonymous.
• Users must either log in again or open a new anonymous session (e.g., via Incognito mode) to regain access.

Workarounds:

• Re-login to refresh the session.
• Open a new Incognito window to access anonymous content.