Google Drive will now alert you of suspicious files with a large, yellow banner

At Google’s Cloud Next event last year, it announced that it was going to find new ways to protect users against spam and abusive practices of its services. The entire year was filled with Calendar and Drive spam among other things where suspicious events, files, and more were randomly appearing in accounts across the globe.

Unfortunately, these weren’t able to be directly handled because the nature of them was that they were abusing the system within the confines of the structure Google set in place. In essence, it was just a busted system that needed rethinking after years of implementation.

Now, we’ve seen auto-blocking tools for both Calendar and Drive, but more help is on the way! In an updated Google Workspace blog post, the company detailed its efforts to sniff out suspicious files while users preview them in Drive. Should something you open contain malware, ransomware, or a phishing scheme, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings will now show an obvious, yellow banner at the top that says the following:

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

Thankfully, this new banner feature is rolling out to all Google Workspace customers, including those with G Suite Basic and G Suite for Business licenses over the next two weeks. This applies to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains alike.

For now, there’s no sign of this rolling out to standard, free Google accounts, but these things are too important for the company to avoid letting them bleed into the other half of its business. Obviously, this is a small step toward solving a much larger problem, but any time Google can bring awareness to users who may not be accustomed to spotting things that look odd or off in some way then it’s a good day for everyone.