Download Sentinel

Warns for potentially harmful downloads.

DOWNLOAD SENTINEL IMPORTANT NOTICE: YOU NEED TO REQUEST A FREE API-KEY AT VIRUS TOTAL TO CHECK DOWNLOAD'S WITH OVER 70 ANTIVIRUS ENGINES! DOWNLOAD SENTINEL DOES NOT BLOCK THE DOWNLOAD, IN STEAD IT PERFORMS ON-DOWNLOAD AND ON-FILE WRITE CHECKS TO WARN YOU FOR SNEAKY TACTICS WHICH WOULD NOT BE SIGNALED WHEN THE INITIAL DOWNLOAD WAS BLOCKED. AFTER THE DOWNLOAD FINISHES THE RESULTS ARE PRESENTED IN A WARNING POPUP. YOU CAN SUPPRESS THIS WARNING FOR ¨PROBABLY SAFE DOWNLOAD¨ IN THE OPTIONS. Every time you download a file, Download Sentinel quietly runs a set of quick checks. No single check is proof of danger on its own; instead, each one adds or removes a few "trust points," and the final total decides whether the file looks Safe, Questionable, Suspicious, or Malicious. 1. HAS ANYONE ELSE ALREADY SPOTTED THIS FILE OR WEBSITE AS SUSPICIOUS? We check at Virus Total if security companies have already flagged this download as dangerous — and for how long it’s been known safe or unsafe. We also check it against lists of known scam websites, like a phone number flagged as a scam caller. 2. CAN YOU TRUST THE WEBSITE AND DOWNLOAD LINK? Some website endings (like odd “.xyz”-style ones) are used by scammers far more than real businesses. Brand-new websites are treated more cautiously than ones that have been around for years — scam sites often appear and vanish fast. We also catch fake lookalikes, like “m1crosoft” or “arnazon.com” instead of “amazon.com”. 3. IS THE (DOWNLOAD) FILE HIDING SOMETHING? If a site says it’s sending a photo but actually sends a program, that’s a red flag. We catch sneaky tricks like “invoice.pdf.exe” (a program disguised as a document), file names secretly reversed so “evil.exe” looks like “safe.jpg”, and extra padding used to hide a dangerous ending from view. We also flag it if the file that arrives is riskier than what was promised, if it’s a bare script (something a home user rarely needs), or if it’s unusually large (too big to be fully scanned). 4. IS THE DOWNLOAD CONNECTION ITSELF RISKY? We flag downloads sent without the padlock (HTTPS), links using a bare set of numbers instead of a real website name, links that quietly redirect somewhere else, and files served from free “throwaway” hosting often used to spread malware. WHAT DOES THE WARNING PAGE SHOW? The warning page shows a risk score based on what VirusTotal knows about the download address. The file itself is never sent to VirusTotal, which is better for your privacy and gives a faster result. After checking the results, you can choose to proceed, or to look up the download at VirusTotal (when it is known there), or at Hybrid Analysis for a free scan with Metadefender and Crowdstrike (when it is not known at VirusTotal yet). OPTIONS PANEL A false positive reduction level can be set to reduce unnecessary warnings for well-known safe software. Up to 12 trusted websites can be whitelisted so downloads from those sites are never checked. You can also set a minimum confidence level to skip the warning automatically when a download is probably safe (default is +80%). The background color and the title of the warning page can be changed to your personal preference. Open Source: https://github.com/Kees1958/DownloadSentinel