Fyi, the executable is "software_reporter_tool.exe" and it lives in:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\SwReporter\
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.
One has to wonder, how much did it cost new?
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...
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.
I know that at least libreoffice on linux scans your files for some odd reason...
Alternatively, there are also firejail profiles which could be used for restricting what these tools can do.
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.
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.