Google, with its loyal emailing platform Gmail, refuses to send email letters that feature .js attachments. Millions of users fell in love with an intuitive, efficient and useful Gmail service, providing 15 GB space for emails and a corresponding application for mobile devices to make sure that you would be able to check your email account everywhere you go.
Besides clearly positive features, users sometimes face restrictions, like limited sizes of attachments and files. To make sure that Gmail would not be used for distribution of malware, its creators began to gradually ban certain file types. At this moment, this is the list of file types that are banned: .ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSP, .MST, .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF, .WSH. Starting from 13th of February, another extension is to join this club: .js.
Once users will attempt to send messages with .js attachments (or basically any extension in the provided list), they will be prevented from sending the letter. Phrase ‘Blocked for security reasons! Help” will appear, informing your about the reasons why this extension is no longer supported by Gmail. Since ransomware infections are getting more popular and emails with various files turn out to be the source for such viruses, we think that limiting the amount of supported extensions is a wise idea. Security measures do not always have to approved by everybody, they also do not have to be extremely convenient: convenience gets you compromised, easy, direct, exciting features of online content gets you compromised.
Of course, we have no intention of sounding like buzz-killers, but we do recommend making your cyber security a priority. Since JavaScripts are a very frequently explored by hackers and they use it for malicious intentions, you should appreciate Google’s efforts. This emailing facility also does not allow to send compressed files or archives (.zip) since they can contain dangerous macros. If you have an account in Gmail, do not get surprised if some of your files are going to prevent you from sending some letters. Appreciate this new security feature since it can complicate hackers’ lives more than yours.
Sources: support.google.com, gadgets.ndtv.com.
