In Mountain Lion, I keep seeing a dialogue box flash on my screen very quickly--almost too fast to notice. I'm worried that it is spyware taking screen shots--help!

You haven't told us enough to even make a guess, what is 'this software' that you got with a credit card, can you read the dialog box?

It's hard to answer your question because you have provided virtually no information. Still, a quick search reveals that one common cause of this behavior is a combination of Java and the Firewall. Are these enabled?

charlie

Try turning off notifications and see if that helps.

This is not spyware, so you can set your mind at ease there. It's hard to say what it might be, but I have heard some people attribute it to a firewall, as CT mentioned. That is only one possible explanation. Try opening the Console app (found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder) immediately after you see this alert, and see what was logged at exactly the same time the alert appeared.

Does it pop up in the middle of the screen, or the upper right corner?

If it's in the upper right corner, it is most likely notifications (email, messages and various other apps will send you notifications when you receive emails, messages, or other items). They pop up for 5 seconds by default, and if you are watching a movie in full screen, they might bleed through, but quickly disappear as the movie refreshes the screen. You can show your list of notifications by clicking on the far right icon (looks like a text list) on the tool bar at the top (or by doing a 3-finger swipe from right to left on the touchpad).

Notifications are the only pop up boxes I'm getting, but then again, I don't have a lot of 3rd party software installed.

Someonesomething wrote:

Additional notes on happy helper person Csound1: If you'd taken the time to read the question, you also would have known that, no, it can't be read--the dialogue box is almost too fast to notice, much less read.

So, you have a dialog box that you can't read ... under what circumstances does it appear? is there a consistent prior event?

Good luck.

I can pretty much guarantee it's not a Java update notification. I just had one of those bounce my App Store icon.

I have this same problem, so it is puzzling to me that so few understand it. The message flashes in the center of the screen much to quickly to be read, but it does grab a keystroke or two when typing, which is most annoying. It is not like the notifications that appear for several seconds in the upper right corner of the screen. These notifications do not appear to be related to the program running, as I have had them occur while using Mail, Pages, Safari, and probably others. Aha...it just happened again while writing this!

Just open your console program, and see what it was looking for, it would say something like "cant open input server...." and will give the name of an application that is causing the error (usually a 3rd party thing you probably don't know about). Use AppCleaner to remove it, it will be in the "other" tab. In my case, it was some ancient program called "multiclutch" which allows you to customize mousepad genstures. Given the date, I'm guessing this just migrated from Macbook to Macbook until eventually I was running Mountain Lion, and it no longer worked. No doubt I coudn't have installed it again, since it's not compatible, but remnants remained and crashed whenever it sensed some input that (apparently) worked on who-knows-how-many versions ago.

Someonesomething wrote:

CT--if I ignore your first sentence, it almost sounds like you're ready to treat me like a human being, rather than someone you think is beneath your dignity. As I mentioned to Csound1: if you'd read above, you would know that if it sounds like I'm giving you virtually no information, it's because I have virtually no information. Usually in this situation, the good idea is to offer suggestions as to what to look at to glean information about the problem.

Hi Someonesomething, CSound and CT have reacted like they did because your post wasn't clear. It may be to you but it wasn't to all, myself included. It was only reading further down the post that I understood what you and maybe even TR were after.

As to virtually no information, you've not said what Mac you have. You didn't say whether the pop up happened at a specific time or was random, no indication of he size or what colour the box might have or its position......the list goes on.

You'll never be able to predict the answers that everybody wants but basically you needed to give it a little more than you did.

Someonesomething wrote:

Could someone please help me figure this out? I got this software from the App Store with my credit card, and I shop online and check my bank records online. If it's not secure, I want to know.

The assumption made by others from the above post is that you bought something to run on Mountain Lion as they know that pretty much the only way you can get ML, is from the App Store with a credit card. They may think there is 'other software' involved, as did I.

Anyway, be interested to find out how you get on as I have something similar.