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Comment by bt3 | Hacker News Reader

Judging on the verbiage of that splash page, it sounds like this is a utility that does nothing more than reset one's settings back to normal, while deleting, or at least disabling a majority of add-ons that may be primary contributors to the crashing, erroneous start pages, and "ads you can't get rid of".

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Heh, when I read it, I took it to mean they are looking for malware exe's that are lodged on your system that affect Chrome. I guess you could go either way on it, but how is this different than just doing the "Reset All Settings" function available in the Chrome settings?

Text: "This application will scan and remove software that may cause problems with Chrome, such as crashes, unusual startup pages or toolbars, unexpected ads you can't get rid of, or otherwise changing your browsing experience."

Maybe helpful for things that prevent you from even getting to Chrome's settings.

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-research-ad-injection... describes why such a tool must exist. AFAIUI, the cleanup tool addresses with the many Windows executables that can compromise the core Chrome experience and user profile settings in order to inject bothersome advertisements.

A paper on this Ad Injection ecosystem was published last year: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43346.html

Interesting, I understood something completely different. I thought it would detect and remove malware installed on the user's computer that affect chrome behavior.

I've seen malware add-ons that add themselves via the Windows registry and are near impossible for a normal user to remove, I've also seen some modify internet behavior by setting malicious DNS servers via group policy. A simple reset of settings will do nothing against these threats.

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