What is LoginLink.action

[pine man]

When I was logging in to one of my on-line UK banks an icon popped up on the desktop with the word 'action' on it and the name LoginLink.action below it.

When I opened it I was asked 'Do you want to install the "LoginLink" action?' 'Actions are the components of Automator workflows. Installing this action will make it available in the Automator library.'

I have never seen this before and have not installed it. Could someone explain what it is please in simple language.

 

[bobtomay]

"Assuming" your bank is Barclays (or even if not), I would call the bank and ask them direct.

 

[pine man]

Definitely not Barclays or any of it's subsidiaries.

Contacted my bank and they have no idea what I am talking about! I think it is something to do with an Apple app called automator or something like that.

 

[pine man]

Further research reveals that it is something to do with the app Automator, which

'lets you automate much of what you do on your computer. With Automator, you don’t need to know complicated programming or scripting languages to create automations—you just use any of the hundreds of actions available in the Automator library to create workflows.'

God knows why it should suddenly leap into action when I log into my bank, which I have been doing for ages.

 

[vansmith]

You might be able to open it up as a plain text document. If you can open it up in something like TextEdit, can you post the contents here (for, perhaps, more my own curiosity)?

 

[pine man]

Sorry after finding Automator I sort of assumed, as it resulted, probably, from an Apple app, it was ok and deleted it.

In my first post the icon is quite well described and on launching it the contents of the box it opened are also as described in that post.

I have tried logging in to various secure web sites and have been unable to replicate it.

 

[cradom]

Are you running Safari? If so, make sure, in preferences, the setting "Open safe files after downloading" is NOT checked.
It's 'possible' you may have inadvertently downloaded some kind of Automator action which was trying to run and download something else.
Doesn't sound kosher to me.

 

[pine man]

Yes I am running Safari. I'll follow your advice and see what happens.

 

[bobtomay]

loginlink.action is a part of the URL of the login page for Barclays as shown below with spaces added so that it is not a direct link in the post

https: // bank.barclays.co.uk / olb / auth / LoginLink.action

Automator is an OS X app. However, just going to that page would not cause Automator to open.

Not really sure how to duplicate what you had happen.

 

[pine man]

'Not really sure how to duplicate what you had happen'

No me neither. I've tried logging on to my bank in all sorts of different ways but it hasn't happened again.