Microsoft Smartscreen / Windows Smartscreen

I've seen a few forum posts which mention SmartScreen in the thread, but haven't seen a post specifically about SmartScreen... so thought I'd start one.

I had never heard of SmartScreen until I started attempting to provide tech support to an old person (my mom, lol) over the phone earlier today.

Some basic/background info:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SmartScreen
  • "SmartScreen Filter was also noted for adding legitimate sites to its blocklists almost instantaneously, as opposed to the several hours it took for blocklists to be updated on other browsers."
  • What type(s) of websites is it a little 'quick on the trigger' on, you might ask?
• https://www.howtogeek.com/123938/htg-explains-how-the-smartscreen-filter-works-in-windows-8/
  • "SmartScreen is a useful security feature that protects your PC, but it may occasionally warn you before you run a legitimate application if SmartScreen hasn’t seen it before."
  • My problem with this is that I'm sure SmartScreen has seen browsers like Firefox (as in this case) and Google Chrome (as in my mom's case) before... gee, this doesn't sound familiar or anything!

 

Not really, and apologies if that is not allowed... I was thinking this might simply become a resource for people looking for info about MS/Windows SmartScreen.

Probably something she caught was preventing her from updating Google Chrome, and seemed suspicious to me... so the easiest alternative thing I could think of was to have her uninstall Chrome manually and then reinstall it.

There was miscommunication and she didn't download the Chrome installer (from Chrome) prior to uninstalling Chrome, so I was trying to have her download it from/via IE or Edge (whichever one she has) and SmartScreen started hassling her about it.

 

Thank you.