Got a tip? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal at +1 9, OTR chat at or email section in Chrome’s Privacy Whitepaper explains that “Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software.” That exact language has been there since at least January of 2017, according to archived versions of the whitepaper. When reached out for comment, a Google spokesperson redirected me to the blog post from last year and Schuh’s tweets.

That’s the problem here: most users of an internet browser probably don’t expect it to scan and remove files on their computers. In other words, Chrome Cleanup Tool is less invasive than a regular “cloud” antivirus that scans your whole computer (including its more sensitive parts such as the kernel) and uploads some data to the antivirus company’s servers.īut as Johns Hopkins professor Matthew Green put it, most people “are just a little creeped out that Chrome started poking through their underwear drawer without asking.” Read more: The Motherboard Guide to Not Getting HackedĪs the head of Google Chrome security Justin Schuh explained on Twitter, the tool’s “sole purpose is to detect and remove unwanted software manipulating Chrome.” Moreover, he added, the tool only runs weekly, it only has normal user privileges (meaning it can’t go too deep into the system), is “sandboxed” (meaning its code is isolated from other programs), and users have to explicitly click on that box screenshotted above to remove the files and “cleanup.” According to Google, the goal of Chrome Cleanup Tool is to make sure malware doesn’t mess up with Chrome on your computer by installing dangerous extensions, or putting ads where they’re not supposed to be. Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean Google can, for example, see photos you store on your windows machine.

“When people fear a big brother, and tech behemoths going too far…a browser touching files it has no business to touch is going to set off alarm bells.” “Nobody likes surprises,” Haroon Meer, the founder at security consulting firm Thinkst, told me in an online chat.

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