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Why are mysterious jpg files being created in my home folder? They seem to be thumbnails with file names containing word moth. 

me@desktop:~$ cd $home
me@desktop:~$ ls
01diplo1-moth.jpg            Documents
30CAR-moth.jpg               dog-slater-obit-moth.jpg
30COVER-moth.jpg             Douthat_New-moth.jpg
30DRINKINGsub-moth.jpg       Downloads
30-DRUGTRIALS-JP1-moth.jpg 
30eat-moth-v2.jpg            ecuador-moth.jpg
30FASTFOODsub-moth.jpg       EXECUTE-1-moth.jpg
30FRANCE-moth.jpg            Friedman_New-thumbStandard.jpg
30GERMANY-moth.jpg           JP-CLINTON-moth-v2.jpg
30-GRET1-moth.jpg            jp-qatar-moth.jpg
30JPHIRSCH1-moth.jpg         justice-moth-v4.jpg
30MOB1_SPAN-moth-v2.jpg      mag-30pot-t_CA0-moth.jpg
30NATURE1-moth.jpg           memory-moth-v2.jpg
30-next-span-moth.jpg        My GCompris
30stone-img-moth.jpg         Pictures
30SUBCOVER_SPAN-moth-v2.jpg  Public
30Tour_2-moth.jpg            rivera1-moth-v2.jpg
audiobooks                   SAMESEX-FLOATER-2-moth.jpg
audiobooks-moth.jpg          STATUE-moth.jpg
BASE-1-moth-v2.jpg           SUB-DELOS-COVER-moth.jpg
Bike-moth-v2.jpg             sunscreen-look-slide-T9SW-moth.jpg
chinagold1-moth-v2.jpg       Templates
Desktop                      tennis-1-moth-v2.jpg
Thomas Ward
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user171605
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    Why these files are in your home folder? Well, probably you or some application put it there. Given the information in the question this is not answerable, I'm afraid. Please be more specific and try to find evidence supporting some application is the cause of this. – gertvdijk Jun 30 '13 at 23:39
  • No, I did not put them there. Yes, an application must be putting them there. I delete them every day, every day there are new files. How can I find evidence of which application is creating them? I am concerned it's a security issue and just curious as to why this is happening. At some point I saw a crash message for evince-thumbnailer. Not sure what that is, it's not an installed app unless its part of evince. It could also be firefox or liferea since all the files seem to be from the web. Def. over my head, WTF issue for me. Thanks for your help. – user171605 Jun 30 '13 at 23:56
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    I think the best approach from here is identifying the process writing these files by **auditing** your home directory for new files. I am not able to provide an answer directly, but here's a start: [File audit in Linux: how to watch directory tree for deletions?](http://serverfault.com/q/144698/135437). Maybe some other user here finds time to adapt it to *new* files and to write an answer here. – gertvdijk Jul 01 '13 at 00:05
  • I am able to audit a file, not a directory. Is anyone experiencing a similar issue? This is bizarre. – user171605 Jul 01 '13 at 02:40
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    you're looking for this: http://pyinotify.sourceforge.net/ and lsof to find out which process is actually accessing a given file. – RobotHumans Jul 01 '13 at 05:16

2 Answers2

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It's liferea, as soon as I start it files start appearing, then stop when I quit.

Also, found this:

Random images appearing in my home directory... Where are they coming from?

Community
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user172437
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The culprit is confirmed as wget via liferea. This seems to be default behavior for liferea. It can be changed under Tools > Preferences > Enclosures tab. If "Save downloads in" is left empty, enclosures are saved in the home folder. Change to wherever you want them to go and problem solved.

user172730
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