How to remove the security warning, or should you?

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

Jimmy — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:14:52 GMT

Sometimes the unlock button under properties won't work if the files is located on a secure folder (e.g program files). To solve this copy the file on non secure folder (desktop for instance) right click, properties and unlock, then copy it back to its original location.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

SUE — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:55:03 GMT

WHEREIS MY ANSWER?????

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

jesper — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:56:33 GMT

Matt, as far as I know, there are no other programs that apply that ADS. Firefox certainly does not. I believe it is an Internet Explorer only feature.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

Matt — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:12:24 GMT

Interesting, do download managers apply the same ADS, does Firefox, Opera, Safari?

I'd never thought about quite how this worked.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

cj — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:07:36 GMT

Internet Explorer marks downloaded files with an alternate data stream that indicates from which security zone the file originated. You can find files with these streams with the sysinternals streams tool. When explorer launches a program with the magic alternate data stream, it displays the warning.

File locking would probably prevent the program from removing the stream once it has been launched for the first time, but you could duplicate the exe and remove the ADS from there.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

jesper — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:16:11 GMT

Obviously it is possible to do on a per-download basis. In fact, you can do it much more easily by simply unchecking the "Always ask before opening this file" checkbox on the dialog above. However, in this case, the discussion was more about whether this dialog serves a purpose at all and can be generally removed so it does not recur when someone downloads a new version of the file.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

Aaron Margosis — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:51:13 GMT

What "ac" said. The easiest way to do this is to browse to the containing folder in Windows Explorer, right-click the file, choose "Properties", and on the General tab, click the "Unblock" button. Note that you have to do this to downloaded CHM files if you want the CHMs to work at all. (I run into this all the time with the Sysinternals tools.)

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

ac — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:04:29 GMT

It is possible to do it on a per download basis, just remove the alternative data stream aka the mark of the web (Ofcourse, if you are the app that was just downloaded, this will not work)

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

jesper — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:17:59 GMT

Yes Scotte. I know I have spoken many times about the naked dancing pigs, but the fact of the matter is that there is no other way to be safe than to think about what you are doing. Rather than trying to pretend there is, and hiding important information from users, we must help them understand that information. There are a lot of dialogs that could be improved, and we need to figure out how. But, we also must start a concerted effort to get users to understand that no technology can ultimately take responsibility to protect them. Just like when you get into a car and chose whether or not to put on the seat belt, opening an application from the Internet is a calculated risk that you evaluate. Users are no more or less capable of evaluating that risk than they are evaluating whether they ought to wear a seat belt or not.

re: How to remove the security warning, or should you?

Scotte — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:39:29 GMT

"Anytime they get a dialog like this they should evaluate it and see if they really want to accept that risk or not. If the publisher is unknown, they have no way to tell who wrote the application, and should consider it a higher risk."

In other words, "Anytime they get a dialog like this, they should evaluate it and see if they really want to see the naked dancing pigs."