Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer (2018)

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43 pointsdfsdfklgjljg25 comments

Unfortunately, that Chrome scanning utility overheated my 2011 Macbook Pro and killed its graphics card. When the Chrome scan ran, it pegged the cpu at 100% and caused the fans to spin up to a very loud full throttle. However, the Macbook couldn't prevent the runaway overheating (the blue screen of striped lines from the death of AMD graphics card). Yes, the Macbooks from 2011 are notorious for having bad cooling design but everything was fine for 8 years until Chrome killed a $3000 laptop.

Fyi, the executable is "software_reporter_tool.exe" and it lives in:

  C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\SwReporter\

I've disabled it on all my computers using the tips from google searches: https://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+scan+"software_report...

There is an even better way to prevent this, and that's not having chrome installed at all. Firefox used to be bad, but now it really is not strictly worse in any category.

>Firefox used to be bad, but now it really is not strictly worse in any category.

I can't run javascript bookmarklets in Firefox.[0] This makes Firefox unusable for me on sites like Youtube, Vimeo, etc.

In Chrome, I use this technique extensively to speed up videos beyond 2x. (E.g. 8x playback speed to quickly get past the ads.)

Yes, you can still paste javascript in a Developer Tools console tab to modify the current page's contents but that's very cumbersome.

EDIT to the downvoters:

- manually pasting "javascript:x" in the url bar does nothing to the current webpage

- putting "javascript:x" into a bookmark and then using the UI to select that bookmark launches a new empty tab instead of modifying the current webpage

If I have posted incorrect information, please state what I'm doing wrong. I just tested the above on Firefox 68.0.2.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32782860/javascript-book...

This works fine for me for setting the video speed in Firefox:

javascript:(function(){(document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0]).playbackRate=prompt("Enter%20desired%20speed%20(e.g.%201.5)","1.5")})()

I also remember having some issues with porting bookmarklets from Chrome to Firefox, I believe the solution was wrapping them in an IIFE like here.

[The following Firefox tests were on Windows 7]

As fyi... I copied your code and it does not work in Firefox 68.0.2. The browser does nothing. I also made sure of the settings[0] in about:config and browser.urlbar.filter.javascript=false -- and it still doesn't work.

As a lark, I also tried it on an older 57.0.1 and it works fine there. (Dialog popup appears to let you enter a number.) To add to the strangeness, it works even though browser.urlbar.filter.javascript=true

So something changed (security setting?) in Firefox between 57.0.1 and 68.0.2. Whatever the magic incantation is to make javascript bookmarklets work in the latest Firefox the same way it does in Chrome, my google-fu hasn't found it. Until then, I have to use Chrome.

(Other Firefox users said they had to install a browser extension to make javascript work in the url bar. I'd rather run plain Firefox instead of installing any extra extensions.)

[0] https://n8henrie.com/2017/11/how-to-open-javascript-bookmark...

Huh, that's curious. I'm running 69.0.2 on Ubuntu and it works just fine here.

browser.urlbar.filter.javascript is set to its default of true, I didn't touch that (or any other related settings as far as I remember).

Sorry, in that case I'm out of ideas as well.

Edit: Also works in a completely clean and new profile for me without any settings or addons whatsoever. Strange.

>I'm running 69.0.2 on Ubuntu and it works just fine here.

Thanks for your help. I just tried another test and installed the latest Firefox 70.0 on a clean Windows 7 machine and it does not work there either.

I also tried Ubuntu 19.04 with Firefox 69.0.2 and it does not work there either.

To be clear, pasting the javascript in a console tab of Developer Tools always works. It's only the url bar that seems to ignore javascript.

URL bar doesn't work for me either but saving it as a bookmark does. Here's a quick recording: https://cdn.baltpeter.io/tmp/firefox-bookmarklet.gif

Thank you.

That is Macbook's issue though, no software should be able to damage the hardware, no matter what it does, unless there is a hardware flaw.

An update fried wi-fi on my iPhone 4S. Sometimes physical reality interferes with expectations and idealizations.

or Rowhammer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer

No, Chrome didnt kill your Macbook, Apple shoddy cooling design and defective Nvidia GPU did.

>defective Nvidia GPU did.

Friendly correction: The 2011 Macbook Pro was AMD chip not NVIDIA. My 2008 Macbook Pro was NVIDIA.

>No, Chrome didnt kill your Macbook,

Yes, I totally understand that perspective and it's more Macbook's hardware defect rather than Chrome programmers. Intellectually, I do get that. I'm just saying that the previous 8 years of running things like MS Excel, MS Outlook, Photoshop, etc didn't peg the cpu at 100% and kill the (defective) Macbook. It was Chrome and its "helpful antivirus software" that I never asked for that finally stressed out the machine. I made a conscious decision to use Chrome the browser but that doesn't mean I wanted to run a hidden software scanning tool.

The Macbook failure is what made me aware of Chrome's new hidden scanner and thus, I disabled it on all non-Apple computers such as Lenovo ThinkPad and my ASUS motherboard desktops. I really don't need Chrome's scanner.

>8 year old laptop valued at $3000

One has to wonder, how much did it cost new?

He probably meant that it costed him $3k when he bought it.

That's not what he said though. Words matter and lying is not okay.

If you go off the prices that are available today which have been consistent for the past ten years it is obvious that $3000 was the purchase price or in the ball-park number.

He wasn't lying, you're just hyper focused on the price of a known product.

The title is alarming enough that I immediately searched for a way to block it.

Apparently, this is only specific to Chrome on Windows:

> [it] looks through your computer in search of malware that targets the Chrome browser itself using ESET’s antivirus engine. If it finds some suspected malware, it sends metadata of the file where the malware is stored, and some system information, to Google. Then, it asks you to for permission to remove the suspected malicious file.

Seems fairly reasonable.. At least I'm not affected by it, being primarily on Mac and Linux.

Another comment here mentions "Chrome scanning utility" on a MacBook though. Ideally I wouldn't use Chrome at all, but I need it for developing and testing web applications.

Just wanted to mention this open-source firewall (macOS application) called Lulu, with which you can (mostly?) block Chrome and other apps/services from phoning home behind the scenes.

https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html

I wonder if this happens on other platforms too...

I know that at least libreoffice on linux scans your files for some odd reason...

People could always use the snap versions of libreoffice/browsers and either limit access to the home directory or remove access to the network. It seems the easiest way of applying a Android permission based model to Linux.

Alternatively, there are also firejail profiles which could be used for restricting what these tools can do.

The snap version has some limitations but I think that is the future.

And just because we maybe can contain it, it doesn't mean libreoffice devs should be off the hook for reading private keys from my drive.

Do you have a source for this? I believe you, I just want to read about something this bad I can't find anything.

About a year ago I enabled apparmor with a bunch of additional rules and noticed some odd denied file read attempts.

I asked around and people blamed it on some Java or pgp stuff. No idea if it's still in there, I can't see it anymore but I also may have disabled all libreoffice plugins.

Dropbox did the same on ubuntu

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