Chrome adds new warnings and cloud scanning for suspicious downloads

Google has updated the suspicious file warnings that Chrome displays about why it may have blocked the download of a potentially suspicious or dangerous file, to provide users with clearer explanations. For people who turn on the Enhanced Anti-Phishing Protection feature by choosing to upload suspicious files for scanning to the cloud, it has also switched to automatic scans, saying that files uploaded for deep scans are 50 times more likely to be marked as malware.

In response to widespread cookie-stealing attacks targeting YouTube channels and other groups, such as hacker Linus’s Tech Tips takeover last year, Chrome has also added a prompt to scan encrypted files, such as .zip files that have a password. Users will be prompted to enter the password for their AI system to open and scan them in the cloud for Enhanced Protection users, while people with the default settings will have files scanned locally using currently available malware definitions.

The new changes are live in current versions of Chrome.

For the labels most of us are likely to see while browsing the internet normally, Google says its warnings will be divided into “suspicious” or “dangerous” categories, depending on how confident its AI models are in the risk level. Users who saw the new warnings ignored them less often and acted on them more quickly, according to a press release Google shared with On the edge.