google: Explained: What is Google Drive, Docs, Sheets new security warning feature and how it can protect users against malware and phishing attacks – Times of India

Google recently rolled out a new suspicious warning banner to Drive, Docs, Sheets and Drawings as a part of the company’s ‘Work Safer’ offering and to protect users against abusive content and behaviour.
But, what is this new warning banner and how will it help users to stay away from malware, phishing attacks and ransomware?
In this explainer, we tell you everything you need to know about Google’s new suspicious warning banner.
What is the suspicious warning banner and when do these banners appear
The suspicious warning banner is a way of Google warning its users against potential harmful content that they may have received from someone.
Google already has a similar implementation in Gmail that shows a Yellow banner at the top of the screen that reads warning against a dangerous email.
On Drive the banner reads, “This file looks suspicious. It might be used to steal your personal information”.
It is also important to know that these are just banner notifications with a warning. It won’t exactly prevent you from downloading the file or from accessing it.
How it can help users to stay away from malware, phishing and ransomware
As mentioned, these are just warning banners and users can either choose to trust Google and stop themselves from accessing the files altogether or dismiss the banner and continue with what they were doing.
So, everything comes to users whether they want to address the warning message from Google or not. However, it is important to know that Google has certain criteria set to flag content as suspicious. For instance, if the file were sent from an untrusted sender or from an uncommon domain, Google might flag them as suspicious or dangerous. It also scans linked images for malicious content.
So, the feature does not fully safeguard users from these attacks but certainly raises a question mark from the file or document. This warns users against the potentially dangerous files and documents that do not meet Google’s terms of services and its Spam policy.
The detection isn’t 100% perfect, sometimes it might flag a file as suspicious if you’ve received something from some random person, who you know and trust.