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I developed a .exe launcher to download files from our servers and keep updating them. Though when people download the launcher from our website, my browser gives the following warning: .exe was blocked because it could harm your device.

Why is this happening? How could I stop this from occuring?

Michael Guimaraes
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    this seems pretty normal browser behavior to be honest; would *you* trust a random exe from the internet? – Marc Gravell Mar 05 '20 at 13:32
  • Hey op, can you please share more? For example, is the hosted website public or in an intranet? Does hosting use HTTPS with a valid certificate? Was the site every flagged as hacked or phishing by Google or others? About the .exe, is it signed? And, as suggested by @MarkusZeller, does it get flagged by an antivirus if scanned? – diogoslima Mar 05 '20 at 13:34
  • just put it inside a zip file....... And if you put a password on the zip it will be even better. – Jonathan Alfaro Mar 05 '20 at 16:00

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For the why: This is happening because most modern browsers are designed to protect their users from potentially malicious code, up to and including various executable, batch and VB file types. This behavior is normal and should be expected.

To stop it happening: Nothing you code will prevent the browser from flagging the file, that's even if the machine doing the download isn't already behind a proxy that scans and quarantines files. You should be aiming to provide an installer (MSI / MSIx etc..) package with a trusted code signing certificate. That wont make the warning go away completely but it does help instill user trust that the source is trustworthy.

Stuart Frankish
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Scan with VirusTotal. Many antivirus scanner detect something in .NET compiled programs.

Markus Zeller
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