Safari downloads numerous "untitled" files

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Level 1

9 points

Safari downloads numerous "untitled" files

Since around Christmas, Safari on my MBP has been indulging in an annoying habit of occasionally downloading zero-length files named "Untitled" whenever it fetches arbitrary web pages.

The pages themselves are benign (e.g., https://www.koingosw.com/products/) and have no actual downloads on them.

I don't have any detectable malware on my machine. I have only two extensions: 1Password 6; and Open in Internet Explorer 14.1.1, which is forced there by Parallels (can't be removed without removing Parallels) and is in any event disabled.

The files are not named Unknown-1, Unknown-2, etc. as they would if they were real files, they are just deposited over and over as one file named Unknown that overwrites all the previous ones.

It doesn't happen on every page and it doesn't happen every time. It doesn't happen on the same page all the time. Sometimes it happens several pages in a row, and sometimes it doesn't happen all day. A couple times, it happened for every webpage I visited until I quit and re-launched Safari.

This behavior started when I was running Sierra; I have since upgraded to High Sierra and it still occurs.

All my macOS updates are up to date, and I keep a very clean machine.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 15", 10.13

Posted on Feb 14, 2019 1:34 PM

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Answer 1

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macswe Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 10, 2019 10:49 AM in response to macswe

I have since narrowed the problem down and determined that the bad behavior is not Safari's fault. I had been storing about a half-dozen "bookmarked" pages in the form of tiny icons slid to the left side of the bookmarks "dock" bar, which due to their age had become out of sight and out of mind. Every time I opened a new page in Safari, these pages came along for the ride, of course. I took them out of the bookmarks dock and the behavior stopped, so obviously one of them was the cause of it.

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