Count Field Not Resetting When Connecting Through VB

I am working with an asp.net/vb.net application whose users have oracle accounts to connect to the application.The database is set up to allow three failed login attempts. When connecting directly to the database, the sys.user$ lcount field increments on unsuccessful login attempts, and resets to 0 on successful login attepts. This is what I expect should happen.

However, when logging in through the application, using:

objConnection = New OracleConnection(m_strConnectionString)
objConnection.Open()

the lcount field sporatically increments on unsuccessful login attempts (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't), and never resets to 0 on successful login attempts. I would have expected it to behave as it does when connecting directly to the database.

Why does the lcount field not reset on a successful login through the application? How can I make it increment on each unsuccessful login attempt and reset on each successful login attempt?