In order to successfully authenticate as a friend of a diarist you MUST have cookies enabled for www.deardiary.net and you MUST make sure that any anti-virus software or personal firewall software does not destroy the contents of that cookie. People using ZoneAlarm should be especially aware of this because ZoneAlarm seems to have something against most cookies that our sites present!
So, if you successfully authenticate for a diarists friend only entries, but then the next screen claims that you're not logged in again, you've got a cookie problem. If you're running personal firewall software, contact them before you contact me!
Steve.