If you have Google Drive, there’s good news.  The company has recently announced that soon they’ll be rolling out a new feature to help alert users to the presence of suspicious documents.

Google Drive users will soon start seeing banners alerting them to possible dangers This will serve as an additional layer of defense that will hopefully keep people from clicking on links embedded in malicious files, which may guide victims to poisoned sites.

The company first announced the new feature back in October during the Google Cloud Next 2021 user conference.

The company explained the functioning of the new feature as follows:

“If a user opens a potentially suspicious or dangerous file in Google Drive, we will display a warning banner to help protect them and their organization from malware, phishing, and ransomware. 

Google will automatically evaluate any files that are shared with you from outside of your organization for phishing or malware. If detected, Google will block your access to the file in order to protect you.”

As to the message, Google kept it simple. 

If you open a suspect file, you’ll see a bold yellow banner across the top of your screen with a message reading:

“This file looks suspicious. It might be used to steal your personal information.”

This is the latest in a series of moves the company plans to make to help protect its user base and prevent Google Drive abuse.  Last year the company added phishing and malware protections in their Enterprise environments that automatically tagged all suspicious files and only left them visible to their owners and Admins.

It’s a small change but it could have significant impacts.  That means fewer users getting taken in by malicious documents and that’s a very good thing.  Kudos to Google for continuing to add user protections.