Google Drive will inform you when your file violates its policies

You’ll now get an email notification if your file is restricted due to suspected spam

Google has been working hard to reduce the amount of spam you receive in Google Drive, which has exceedingly become a problem in recent years. That’s why the company made it possible to block and report spammers, which does help a bit. Unfortunately, there are always also false positives with innocent files being flagged for spam, so it’s important to let owners of these know what’s up. As announced in the latest Google Workspace update, the company will take care of just that.

Owners of suspected spam will receive an email informing them about the fact that the file in question has been restricted. These emails will link to Google’s terms of service and its abuse program, helping those affected gauge what may have caused their file to be flagged as spam. It will also explain how you can appeal against the decision. For items living in shared Drives, the manager of the storage will receive the email.

When a file is restricted, it won’t be straight out deleted. The creator or owner of the file will still be able to access it and work with it, but it will no longer be possible to share it with others; even existing links will stop working. Affected files also carry a flag next to their name, indicating that something is wrong. While the correct path of action would be to appeal to the decision if you think it was wrongly made, it’s likely easier to just copy and paste the content to a new file.

The new notifications will roll out over the next two weeks, so it might take some time until you will see them in action — though we would hope that no one ever wrongly runs into these.

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