favicons?

It's a tool for making your own sort of I can't think how to put it....personal mark? You can attach it to your blog for example, or your website. So if you read a blog in Blogger, there will be a red B next to it in your favourites. A W for Wordpress. But you can make up your own.

Its an abbreviation for favorite icons

Thanks, I realised what it was, but am not sure if they only show when you have sort of "book marked" a site or if they happen automatically.

I'm having real trouble explaining myself!

I mostly use FireFox for browsing, they have a built in system that automatically adds favicons when you bookmark a page, They were invented originally so that it kept count of how many people bookmarked a page, is that any help?

Sort of newist What I'm trying to ask is if they can appear by accident, i.e. for a site you have never visited?

(I do have a reason for asking, it's not idle curiosity)

Bump!

To the best of my knowledge they should only get into your computer if you have used a site, by saving or downloading something, they should not get into your computer by themselves

Thanks newist that helps.

Just Google it phoenix, there are lots of explanations

Lona I have googled, lots of info on how to create them but couldn't find the answer to my question.

Phoenix Wikipedia says "Originally, the favicon was a file called favicon.ico placed in the root directory (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/favicon.ico) of a web site. It was used in Internet Explorer's favorites (bookmarks) and next to the URL in the address bar if the page was bookmarked. A side effect was that the number of visitors who have bookmarked the page could be estimated by the requests of the favicon. This side effect no longer works, as all modern browsers support the favicon without bookmarking."

So I think that any site you visit, bookmarked or not, will download a favicon along with the sites URL.

Sorry, forgot the link. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon

Also forgot apostrophe - site's URL.

So I think that any site you visit, bookmarked or not, will download a favicon along with the sites URL

Thank you Elegran I had a feeling that that was the case.

Should we be worried by this?

No more than you might worry about your browser downloading the site URL. It does that every time you visit a site - any site - so that you can use that site on that occasion, and stores the info for the future.

What may happen is that the browser could have so many site addresses stored that it takes a long time checking each one each time you turn it on.

A spring-clean of the list of the contents of History and Temporary Internet Files every so often could make a difference to the speed of your connection. You can probably set your browser to delete History and Temporary Files when it is turned off.

Or you can get a free app to do a spring-clean for you (eg Ccleaner) and use that every week or month or whatever. It cleans other unnecessary stuff too. But make sure you get a reputable one.

Depends on the sites, Ana

Oh, well I haven't visited any disreputable ones as far as I know, phoenix, so that's all right.