Google Blocking Some Downloads of uTorrent in Chrome

[allheart55 Cindy E]

I think this is a good thing! I wonder if FireFox will follow suit.... Those determined users that continue to use torrents will just keep on getting infected.

A number of tech pundits and helpful "you should install these apps" lists often feature uTorrent as a must-have BitTorrent app. Google, it seems, would disagree.

 

According to a recent article from TorrentFreak, the search giant has allegedly placed the uTorrent installation executable on its naughty list for Google Chrome. Some of those attempting to download the latest build of uTorrent from its official site have been hit with a warning within Chrome that the uTorrent.exe file is "malicious" and that Chrome had "blocked it" from being able to be downloaded.

 

The truly persistent can elect to "recover" the "malicious file" from their download list within Chrome, but picking that option summons a second warning from Google: "This file will harm your computer. Even if you have downloaded files from this website before, the website may have been hacked. Instead of recovering this file you can retry the download later."

 

It's a bit unclear just what file Chrome is blocking, however, as we have been able to download the latest uTorrent build without any issue. Perhaps Google lifted its ban since TorrentFreak attempted to access the file. That, or the uTorrent website might offer up different versions of the executable when a user goes to download the installer, and one (or some) of these are being flagged.

 

Google also hasn't gone into detail as to why Chrome is blocking uTorrent, nor why it considers the uTorrent installation file to be a malicious download. Google's diagnostic page for the uTorrent.com domain does indicate that "suspicious content" was found on the site even today, and that the site has hosted what Google considers malware within the previous 90 days.

 

That said, longtime uTorrent users are likely familiar with the fact that the uTorrent installation process does have the potential to install annoying toolbars and other annoying bloatware on a user's system — especially if said user is just blindly clicking on the "Next" button to get through the installation process. That hasn't been enough to trigger Google warnings previously, but it's possible that a recent addition of other software junk into the mix might have pushed uTorrent over the proverbial edge.

 

"I recently had to download and reinstall uTorrent after my SD died, and I assume google is doing this is because lately uTorrent has been packing some stupid web search malware. I can't remember the exact name, and your antivirus won't detect it... but it's candy something and websearch both included in recent downloads of the client. I noticed it when I was installing and opted out, but I would assume that's why the program has been flagged by Google recently. A quick run of Antimalware gets rid of the annoyance, and utorrent works just fine after it's gone," writes user sneakily1, in a comment on TorrentFreak's article.

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2461108,00.asp

[Rich-M]

If we could eliminate torrent downloaders half the infected systems would be clean today!