A folder has appeared at the top of my “My Documents” folder named “.junique”? I don’t recall when it appeared, but probably in the last month or so. Inside it is something called “global.lock” which is identified as a “LOCK file.” What is this?
When I google on these terms, what I find seems to tell me that this is associated with a program called “JDownloader.”
So… is this a firefox plugin that I installed one day when I was downloading something?
Is this good?
I’d nuke it from orbit, just to be sure.
When WIndows sess a a file whose extension (the part after the dot) it does not recognize, it reports that as a “WHATEVER file” in all caps.
e.g. If you create a plain file named “ThelmaLou.bogus”, Windows doesn’t know what a .bogus file represents, it’ll just say it’s a “BOGUS file”.
Bottom line: That file name means nothing to Windows. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s evil.
As to the .junique folder & your Googling. This could have been a firefox plugin. Or if you subscribe to any streaming or downloading or sharing services it could be connected to that.
It’s *conceivable *it’s related to malware you inadvertantly installed which is now using your machine as a porn server. It’s also *conceivable *that you’ll win the lottery on Saturday.
If you absolutely positively never do anything but email & surf the SDMB on that computer, the odds on it being bad are high. But if you use your PC to download or stream content from any legit sites, it’s much more likely to be legit software. IMO it’s too obvious to be malware.
If it were malware, surely it would not be so dumb as to place itself in plain view at the top of the My Documents folder.
(Or are they on to double-bluffing us now?)
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It seems to be a Java library, so it could well have come, perfectly innocently, from some web site you visited. On the other hand, this page suggests that it comes from Sauron, so it may be advisable to drop it into a volcano.
Clearing your Java cache may get rid of it.
How do I do this?
This sets off alarm bells for me. Most modern captchas come from OCR work that even Google, with all of their resources, can’t figure out. If Google can’t do it, then a dinky little Java program running on a single computer certainly can’t. The fact that they’re claiming to be able to recognize captchas means that either they’re employing armies of third-worlders to read them, or they’re lying, and neither bodes well for the trustworthiness of this thing.
That may depend on your OS version, and perhaps Java version too. In Windows, there should be a Java icon in the Control Panel. Double click on that to open the Java control panel and look around. On my old XP machine there was a button marked “Clear cache”. It also gave you some warnings not to do it, but I used it several times and never had a problem.
I currently have Windows 7 and Java 6. It appears that there you need to click on “Settings” (in the “Temporary Internet Files” of the General tab of the Java Control Panel) and then click “Delete files”. Alternatively, you might click on “View” (next to the Settings button), which may allow you to select and delete just the junique stuff.
Of course, if this works, it is probably harmless anyway.