What’s That Silly Symbol?

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

What’s That Silly Symbol on website signing-on boxes? It occurs on this forum but also others.

I mean the little yellow square with two concentric arcs, some tiny dots and a larger red one; planted in the name and password boxes.

They are recent, and look as if concocted by some bored Microsoft employee on a Seattle Winter Friday afternoon because he can and wants to be seen Doing Something Useful. For they seem to have no purpose whatsoever.

Anyone know what – if anything – they indicate?

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Not showing on my iPad.

just one of those multiple picture captcha thingies below the boxes.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Conspicuous by their absence on my devices, Nigel

… could you please post a screenshot ?

MichaelG.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Isn’t it a cue to autofill your username and password?

 

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

Nigel,

They don’t “appear” on either my iPad or PC, UNLESS they happen to overlap other print on the page.  This is shown where I’ve highlighted the text in the partial screenshot below:

Without highlighting, they merely look like ghostly shapes.

They are links to Facebook sign in to a Model Engineer page and ditto to Twitter.  I clicked on them both to find that out.  I don’t do social media, so pursued it no further.

They seem anchored to the page, so don’t move as the page is scrolled and, on the iPad, often obscure the signing-in boxes.

I assume these are the annoyances to which you refer.

John

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

No yellow boxes or red dots showing for me. Post a screen shot or stay off the Xmas sherry.

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

This is the banner of the forum. If you look on the far right you will see the symbols as they should appear. Since I am using a large monitor, as shown by the extra plain sections on either end, there is plenty of space to display it correctly, if it is being compressed then the various elements may end up being positioned incorrectly over other elements. In you are using a browser that lets you change the zoom of the screen then it may change where they appear. For example in edge, Ctrl and + or Ctrl and – will change the zoom setting (Ctrl and zero key will put it back to standard).

Martin C

Martin C

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Be really helpful if Nigel could post a screenshot, please!!!   Also, what OS and Browser?  My crystal ball never works properly.

Screenshots, not difficult.  From memory, the windows tool is called ‘Snip’.   Go to bottom left and type Snip into the text box.   This should open a pop-up listing the Snip App, which can be started by clicking on it. (I’m on Linux this morning and can’t confirm.)

Once snipped, select area is usually best, and saved to Pictures, upload the image to a forum post in the usual way.

Recommend everyone learn how to post pictures, otherwise we get noise like “… look as if concocted by some bored Microsoft employee on a Seattle Winter Friday afternoon because he can and wants to be seen Doing Something Useful. For they seem to have no purpose whatsoever.”   Pure prejudice, a waste of time reading it, and it doesn’t help identify the actual problem, or even if there is one!

Dave

PS Plenty of genuine opportunities to criticise Microsoft, but please don’t fog queries by adding them wildly to posts!

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

Nothing appears on my log-in.

Would you like me to mention this to my Son-in-law, he is in daily contact with Seattle?

Regards

Gray,

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

So disappointed not to see this problem.

Perhaps it’s time to fix the silly browser settings.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Do you mean this one, or some colour variation of it which seems to depend on your browser colour sceme?
Seems to vary depending on where you see it.
When you hover over the symbol, it says “search by image”
Bing has something similar

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

They are the Twitter Symbol and Facebook symbol. It’s not hard to see on the full banner.

Martin C

[Martin Johnson 1Participant @martinjohnson1]

Well that explains a lot.  Trying to log in a couple of days ago, tried to enter my email in the username box and kept getting sent to Face ache.

Normally the Zuckerberg links are parked as shown in Martin Connellys post.  HOWEVER when I signed in just now, they migrate as shown in John Hinckley’s post.  If you get them in the wrong place (like the sign in boxes) they are invisible as they are white on white.  Hence me being re directed to Zuckerburg land.  Please fix it Mr Moderator.

Martin

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It is unlikely to be the white FB etc icons as Nigel mentions a yellow square and red dots which is not what Martin C mentions and as it is on the login screen will not be a Google search icon either.

Nigel also says he gets it on other sites so please don’t blame this one and the Mods

We may not have a picture but at least read his description

Regarding the moving FB etc icons It is not a problem the mods can fix, as someone mentioned above it happens when you zoom the screen to a different size and the icons get wrapped onto the next line. Suspect you zoomed at some time to look at something and never returned it to the original size. Brought it up when the new system was introduced so not new.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, yes you get the Facebook and Twitter symbols making a ghostly appearance in both the sign in and password box’s. when you scroll the page up, they also interfere with the wording above these box’s. But you don’t get anything with colour that Nigel has said. The # sign highlighted in my sceenshot below shows them quite clearly.

 

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

No, it is not the Facebook and Twitter (oh, all right, ‘X’ if we musk) signs. I know perfectly well what they look like – and I avoid them like the plague. I have also seen that curious ghost image effect, but assumed that some sort of display-refreshing problem.

Right, let’s try the snip and see if it works. I have known quoting things sometimes to strip details off.:

 

Yes, there they are.

Aha_  Emboldened by this thread I tentatively clicked on one.

They are actually links, but Norton ones. They do not though, resemble the normal Norton symbol, a yellow square with a ticked circle. So I made no connection in my mind to Norton.

Makes a change from Microsoft’s clutter to find someone in Norton whiling away a Friday afternoon – sorry Seattle!

I had wondered if they were some strange way to highlight the boxes, just a static symbol, but had been very wary of clicking on them to find out. Rather like the innocent weather notifier in the corner of the screen, and which is a Microsoft device*, you never know what tinned Lumbricidae lurk within. Since they had appeared only recently and no-one else seemed to have spotted them, I was suspicious. I realised they were probably legal, not some weird sort of virus, but since they turned out to be for an automatic password-filler, I am still wary! What’s the point of a password if it’s kept on some remote Internet server?

….

*(The weather thing used to open Bing and MSN, now just says “widgets” whatever those are, but none available. Well, perhaps unavailable because I have turned off or “uninstalled” as many of MS’ optional auxiliaries as I could: games, Bluetooth, camera, etc. Especially after finding the company sticking random ones of my photographs in a very strange folder also holding others’ images, among its MSN news and ads links. )

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks for posting an image, Nigel

… it’s worth the proverbial thousand words !

Clearly a local issue, which you have invited by using Norton

All’s well that ends well.

MichaelG.

.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Norton password manager, think it is red if not saved and green if saved.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Gosh, I didn’t know Norton was still around, does it slow things down a lot like it used to? 😆

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

It calls itself “Norton Antivirus” on its screen symbol so I don’t know if that its entirety or some edition, but I don’t think it slows the computer.

It can be rather annoying by sometimes wanting me to buy extensions to it, though.

Norton recently caught a virus riding on what I learnt later was a genuine TurboCAD file intended, I think, to allow it to load up-dates. Subsequently, TC plaintively tells me it can’t accept up-dates and asks if my software is complete. It also sometimes worries my licence is not valid (it is, with Paul Tracy’s help!). I doubt I am missing anything significant, but Norton’s action appears to have been to kill the TC file as well as the virus, under the euphemism “quarantined”.

It has stored my pass-word for this site, and apparently by default rather than choice, though I may have missed something to that extent when rebuilding everything a few weeks ago.

 

What is more annoying, and this seems limited to this web-site, is this site becoming more and flakey to enter. Just now it took three attempts – at least a bit better than last night’s six tries. It goes so far but examining any opened forum shows the contribution box in a faint form. Whether that’s something Norton-related, I have no idea.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Vic, I’ve never known Niorton to slow down my computer, but I have used their 360 for years, what I don’t use though, is the password manager, I can remember almost all my passwords, but they are all keep on a safe memory USB which I can use on a separate laptop that isn’t connected to the outside world, the USB has it’s own password for the app within, and if I forget that, there is no way of retrieving or resetting it, but I do have a method which will remind me of it, and it’s not likely that anyone could work it out.

Regards Nick.

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