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! 😉