Google’s office collaboration tools Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings will now display a warning banner when you open potentially malicious files from the web, the search giant has announced. This banner already appears when accessing dubious files from within Driveas well as suspicious links within separate Files of Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and Drawings. The broader implementation should help protect users in a broader range of situations.
Confusingly, Google january 20 post announcementt said the banner already appeared when opening the Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings links. However, the company tells us that this was a typo and should instead say that the banner appears under “links from Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files.
The warning banners appear to be an attempt to combat scams that use Google’s office productivity software to create an appearance of authenticity around dubious links and phishing attempts. In 2020, cabling reported in a wave of scams that used Google’s various collaboration and sharing features to show their malicious files to unsuspecting users. Clicking on a link in one of these documents sends the user to a site full of dubious advertisements, or to a typical phishing site that asks them to enter bank or other account details.
Google’s announcement says that the new warning banner will roll out over the next two weeks to all accounts, both business and personal.