Thank you so much, darling Deb, szilvia, and Tina for your oh-so-reassuring comments (And thank you so much, Tina, for testing this phenomenon out on your own 4shared site). And thank you veevs.

Finally got a response today from 4shared…

So the whole reason for that strange orange sign was because I have passwords protecting my file. Phew! (Amazingly, this is what my three darling friends figured out before I received my email). Thank you, 4shared, for your response. And thank heavens that I can now resume my freebie uploading without a worry about strange messages cropping up. Thought you’d like to know why that sign is there.

I asked support how I could solve this problem (i.e., get rid of that message) while still being able to protect my files with passwords. The solution is to password-protect the whole folder. I’ll figure out how that works and let’s see how it goes from there. If it’s just too difficult, I may forget passwords altogether (what? and lose the creative thrill of thinking up passwords? 😆 )

Working on Set 3 of Winter Shimmer as we speak… and going back now to the salt mines.

All is right with heaven and earth… and my 4shared site! Woohoo! 😉

Yeah, I know, those words half don’t make sense. Like what’s happening at 4shared totally doesn’t make sense.

I was just chatting with my wonderful friend veevs and she checked other 4shared sites, and ALL of them have this notice.

Will keep you updated as we sort this out, darlings. Thank you so much for your patience.

Oh and the best cyber-sleuth? That would be my friend veevs.

My friend J just alerted me to something on my 4shared site where Set 2 of Winter Shimmer is… a note that says “Protected archive-failed to virus-check-2007-12-05” which TRUST ME was NOT there earlier when i checked my site (and there were already 16 downloads by then). I have an amazingly strong anti-virus software installed in my compy and I always check everything I download and upload … ALWAYS.

Here’s the most baffling thing: if you check on the 4shared site DATE UPLOADED, it says “2007-12-06”.

So how can you state “Failed to virus-check” if you’re doing this to a file that has not YET been uploaded as of the time you failed your virus-check? Think about it: Failed to virus-check – date? Dec. 05″ Compare it to date uploaded “Dec.06” ????? Can you explain that to me, Kaspersky people? I mean, if you have a way of virus-checking files that have not YET been uploaded, well then, that’s totally amazing! What’s that called–cyber-ESP?

I’m sorry for the rant, my dears. I’m not normally like this… but I’m totally aghast at this development!

I’m presently trying to download my own file and will check it out. If it seems like it’s been sabotaged (my friend J tells me that nothing comes out of the file), then I’m taking that down, changing the password, and uploading a new file.

Oh, and for the sake of your own peace of mind, I never, ever, ever, ever upload a file without running it through a virus-check, EVEN IF I know my compy is virus-free. I am deathly afraid of those buggers, ask my dearest and closest friends. I love playing around with my compy too much to not make sure it’s got itself protected in a plastic-bubble from those atrocious things. And then there’s that OC-AR tendency in me to double-and-triple check, even if the virus-scan software runs every so often within the same hour, 24/7. Just want you to know, you have nothing to worry about. 

And that is why I rant at things like this. I mean, really, what is supposed to be accomplished by something like this? I just want to share my designs (insert crying emoticon here).

Okay… now on to checking this bummer. Will be back to let you know what happens.