Chrome now blocks users from downloading many filetypes (zip, chm, etc) from ifarchive.org since Chrome thinks they may contain some kind of malware. I first got this problem with inform634_win32.zip, but it looks like it affects lots of files.
What can be done, and who can do it?
I reproduce this issue. https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/executables/inform634_win32.zip
While investigating this issue, the problem went away on its own. 
@fredrik is it working for you now?
The best advice I can give is: Donāt use Chrome.
Itās the largest piece of spyware on the planet with the exception of Microsoft Windows.
No, no change. Still canāt download any zip files.
Try rebooting your computer, and then try clicking on the exact link I posted above?
(Rebooting might help because it appears that Google changed something on their end; the fix might not have rolled out to you yet.)
Ok, it works after a reboot and Windows Update.
I tried updating and restarting Chrome first, but that wasnāt enough.
Thanks.
I donāt know what Chrome is checking behind the curtain or why a Windows update would change it, but Iām glad itās working now.
Regarding Windows and Chrome, my consideration is: 
I bet the Windows Update was a coincidence. The main thing was fully quitting Chrome and reopening it.
I agree. Killing all instances with the task manager probably would have fixed it too. Especially since I believe that Chrome installs as a service by default for quicker launching (which I always disable, because āEwā¦ā).
Just to be clear: Updating Chome, closing Chrome and reopening Chrome was not enough.
Iām convinced that the best browser setup is Firefox reinforced with the adblock+noscript combinationā¦ and this is my suggestion.
IIRC, when I tried to download something from ifarchive.org about a year ago, the ISP (The Post Office) blocked it because it was āa dating siteā!
(Iām using Brave, which seems to be a slightly-tweaked Chrome principally because reading āNew Scientistā on The Web is bearably fast, which it isnāt with Firefox.)
one should assume that your ISP is the UK post office ?
yea, I remember UK having implemented net filtering, jokes in the EU being that UK net filtering is more victorian than chinese, and UK post office considering IFArchive a dating site is, well, a very hilarious incident 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Correlations between the fix and updating Chrome, restarting Chrome, and rebooting the computer may all just be coincidental. I suspect it has more to do with when cache entries get refreshed, and many factors go into that. If Chrome has a cached list of suspect URLs or fingerprints for downloads, it might just take time before your installation grabs the fresh list with the false positive removed.
This also could have something to do with how the files are served (of which, I know nothing). If you type chrome://flags in the address bar, youāll see a huge list of fine-grained options. In that, you can find this one:
Treat risky downloads over insecure connections as active mixed content
Disallows downloads of unsafe files (files that can potentially execute code), where the final download origin or any origin in the redirect chain is insecure if the originating page is secure.
I donāt know if there are redirects behind that URL, but if there are, and if any of them are over HTTP rather than HTTPS, this safety feature would probably block the download of a ZIP (certainly of a ZIP that contains executable files).
Again, I donāt know anything about how the archive serves, so this may or may not apply here.
ifarchive.org and www.ifarchive.org go through CloudFlare these days. They should not redirect at all.
Currently thereās not even a redirect from the non-HTTPS http://ifarchive.org/ to the HTTPS version https://ifarchive.org/ ā¦ I wonder if it would be a good idea to add that redirect?
