Government & Political SPAM!
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Sounds like a random website included this file as part of its page contents, and it is very likely to be someone's personal site contents, rather than something produced by a government. (The web is not strictly classified into personal-or-corporate-or-government websites, and all websites are treated equally.)
By default, Vivaldi (like virtually all browsers) downloads "safe" file types (referring to the file's mime type, not whether the contents are safe to read) without any prompts, if a link points to it and you activate that link. This is to make life easier when you visit a website that includes Word documents or whatever as if they were website page contents.
If you would like it to treat all downloadable files as risky/dangerous, so that you get a prompt to download them into a chosen folder, you can use - on Android - Vivaldi menu, Settings (gear icon) - Content Settings - Downloads - Ask where to save files. There are also a couple of other settings you can use there, if you would like.
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PPathduck moved this topic from Forum on -
@Pathduck Windows forum, for a file on his phone?
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You should be able to find the source of the file in your browser's downloads window.
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@Arachnid Given how Android and iOS work, it would not normally be possible for a download to start in Vivaldi, unless you were actively using that app. The phone operating systems both pause apps while other apps are in use, or when the phone screen is switched off.
(The exception would be a page that is playing video/audio, which is allowed to run scripts while it plays, so a page could conceivably start a download while that was happening, but it would be really weird for a page to try doing that, and I wouldn't be surprised if the browser or system refused to download something in such a case. Android and iOS eventually stop video/audio and therefore scripts on those pages too - usually a few song's worth of time. So any such download trickery a page might try to use, would have to happen within a few minutes of you switching off the screen. This is not what has happened for you, just because it would be a really stupid thing for a page to intentionally try to do, because there is no benefit to doing that, for a website, and it would be so unreliable.)
A very slow download (such as a site that delivers one kilobyte of data per minute) could conceivably complete downloading a long time after you stopped looking at your phone, and once it completes, it gets stored, and that gives it its creation/modified time. (At that rate, that particular download would take 4 hours.)
But are you absolutely certain this came from Vivaldi? Is it in Vivaldi's downloads panel (that would give you more information about where/when it came from)? Lots of other apps can download things. Chat apps like WhatsApp, for example, can do it too, and in some apps, that could happen automatically if someone sends you the file, without you actively asking to save it.
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@Arachnid I'm not sure Vivaldi has anything to do with it. I mean, could be an email attachment, or perhaps some other messenger client that will run while the phone is inactive.
Unless it's actually listed in Vivaldi's Downloads list, you really don't know where it came from.
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I think Arachnid (OP) may be onto something. Today I had a similar problem, and this is why I'm concerned.
I was not using Vivaldi. I'm in my writing app and just have Vivaldi up in the background with a few basic sites pulled up (google sheets, gmail, google calendars, zillow, and FB messenger). I am not actively using them. While writing in my separate app, I suddenly got a "download complete" pop-up notification from Vivaldi. It showed that I had successfully downloaded a .xlsx file about something to do with LOA and the source came from a .gov site. I cannot remember the last time i was on a .gov site. I panicked and deleted it from downloads and recycle bin immediately without recording the details, hoping it was a one-off situation.
Five minutes later, I'm again not touching Vivaldi. Haven't changed the sites on it or used them at all. I get ANOTHER "download complete" pop-up notification. This time, I had the presence of mind to take a screenshot.
Now it's from a different .org site for Lassen County, CA (I assume, based on google's results for Lassen County, I did not open the website address). I live in the midwest and have not done any research on California. There's no reason for this document to be auto-downloading to my computer unprompted.
I don't know what's going on, but Vivaldi is DEFINITELY downloading documents unprompted. I'm less panicked since they are from .gov and .org sites so probably less likely to be malicious but at the same time, it's still very unnerving that this can happen.
