Program Download - IE CHROME - "is not commonly downloaded and could be dangerous."

The best resources are this blog post and this blog post.

To sum up:

1. Sign you package with an authenticode signature.
2. Don't be malware (I'm sure you got that covered).
3. Logo your software (if it's not a browser plug-in).

This can be a frustrating process, so hang in there. Microsoft has not disclosed how many downloads one needs to build a reputation, but in practice once you stop changing the package (the hash is part of the reputation) then you can get past this fairly quickly.

I've fixed this by uploading the file to Google Drive (you can convert the Google Drive share link to a direct download link using some online converter).

Now my executable downloads without warning. Silly but it works.

I just had the problem (again) today

file is not commonly downloaded (keep/discart)

I made many tests including moving the zip on another server, re-compressing the zip file with another software, etc. I concluded that Google Chrome didn't like that zip file contained an .url shortcut file in it (a link to my site). I removed the .url from my zip and then it worked without the download error.

I had to change content inside ~5000 zip files on two sites, nice one Google.

BTW: the site is not listed as malware anywhere and files inside the zips are mostly .psd on one site and and .swf on another site, no exe or anything.

And previously when I had this problem it was because of some bad header(s) set when downloading the file.