Desktop Icon Names Keep Changing
 

I'm running Windows 10 home on a Dell laptop. I have a number of internet shortcuts on the desktop, all named for the appropriate website eg: the Amazon shortcut is named 'Amazon', the PPRuNe shortcut is named 'PPRuNe' and so on. Some websites are 'read only' but some are interactive, in that they require you to input information before opening the site. I have started to notice that on occasions when closing these websites, the shortcut on the desktop has changed its name to the first bit of information required by that website. For example, when I opened the eBay website yesterday and typed in a search for ski boots, on closing the site the desktop icon had changed its name from 'eBay'to 'Ski boots'. Same happens to Amazon, Google UK and, more worryingly, my bank icon name changes to my supposedly secure bank username. I can easily rename the icons back to their original name, but am worried that the bank username can get from their secure log-on website back into my computer. Any ideas?

Which browser are you using?

I have a similar problem with my new MacBook where all the desktop icons disappeared. Fortunately iCloud had a back up. Any ideas why they should just vanish?

le Pingouin: Chrome. It seems to be an intermittent fault - most of the time there is no problem. Just worried how information I type into a secure website (bank log-in page) can appear on my desktop.

How did you create the shortcuts? "Add to desktop" through Tools in Chrome?

Presumably Chrome is responsible but I can't find a solution - Google came up with someone asking the same question in 2012 but no answer.

You might want to consider using bookmarks in the browser rather than desktop shortcuts. Or maybe try recreating the shortcuts using incognito windows.

I wonder if it's taking the new icon name from the title in the tab in Chrome? Certainly a possibility from the description for Google and eBay. Does your bank website by any chance display your bank username in the title bar?

Never heard of THAT! Some thing majorly wrong with your Windows install, I suspect…

First of all, do nothing for a few days, lots of Windows hiccoughs go away on their own so long as you don't fiddle with it.

Then you can check your basic Windows files by typing "sfc /scannow" from an elevated (Administrator) command line.

You MAY be able to do a "System Restore" to an earlier point in time, but this never worked for me since Windows 7.

You can waste hours and days chasing the error (and probably not find it) or you can gather all your passwords and app. install keys and "Reset" Windows (Settings -> Update and Security -> Recovery -> Reset).

The whole fandango is now so complex that finding the corrupted entry in the Registry or your User Profile and fixing it, is only for masochists like me, buried under thick books purporting to document what is really going on inside.

Sometimes I succeed…

Mac ;-)

[Linux is MUCH easier to fix]

I had a similar problem with self-naming desktop icons with Win 7. Local "Help" guy said stop using them.
Now all favourites/bookmarks are held in Firefox only. Have not had a problem with that.