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>Chrome constantly scans your harddrive in a way you can't easily turn off, and it's not for your safety: it's for the safety of their ad business to try to cat

>Chrome constantly scans your harddrive in a way you can't easily turn off, and it's not for your safety: it's for the safety of their ad business to try to catch malware that engages in click fraud. If you have media or backup drives it just constantly adds wear to them. Is this true? Chrome is open source so someone should be able to point out the code that is doing that. What is the source of this info if not the code?

BadHumans 3y ago
I second this. This is a very strong accusation to have no proof.
- cma 3y ago
  Linked above, they apparently removed it last March but it was there for years and years.
grey_earthling 3y ago
Chrome isn't open source.
kuratkull 3y ago
Chromium is open source, Google adds some secret magic sauce to make Chrome.
bluish29 3y ago
I don't know but chromium is the base of chrome. Does google release chrome in an open way? Can't they (at least in principle) apply whatever patches they want before build and release?
doubled112 3y ago
https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome-cleanup/ https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome... https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwantedsoftware https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwant... > Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software. In addition, if you have opted in to automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google, Chrome will report information about unwanted software, including relevant file metadata and system settings linked to the unwanted software found on your computer. > System information includes metadata about programs installed or running on your system that could be associated with harmful software, such as: services and processes, scheduled tasks, system registry values commonly used by malicious software, command-line arguments of Chrome shortcuts, Windows proxy settings, and software modules loaded into Chrome or the network stack.
- clucas 3y ago
  This is interesting, I didn't know Chrome did this. But it doesn't back up the claim that "[i]f you have media or backup drives [Chrome] just constantly adds wear to them." Does anyone have anything on that?
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    As pointed out above, Chrome no longer does this... but adding wear is a natural consequence of any hard drive scanning process. SSDs are rated for a certain number of read/write cycles, and every time a block is read, it adds wear. Even spinning rust wears out eventually. Not knowing any details about how often Chrome did this, it is hard to say just how significant this wear would be compared to other normal uses of the media. But it is clear that wear would occur to some degree.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Not only does it add wear, it slows down other processes. People notice this after OS updates where the system re-indexes the volume after the update completes. It's also why most indexing processes do it late night or while the system is idle. For an app like a browser to do it is just rude.
    - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
      > SSDs are rated for a certain number of read/write cycles, and every time a block is read, it adds wear. Only write cycles cause wear, read cycles don't cause any meaningful wear.
      - ensignavenger 3y ago
        Thank you for clarifying that! I should have known that. So perhaps it wouldn't cause any meaningful drive wear, if the system didn't do a lot of writes. Still consumes CPU and power, though.
        3y ago
giancarlostoro 3y ago
When I realized that Microsoft Defender sends sample files for further inspection without keeping a history of the files I opted to just install Linux and move on. This alone gives me more reason to just only use Firefox exclusively like I always have been.
jcmoyer 3y ago
Anecdotally, Chrome used to pin my hard drive at 100% usage until I killed a process called "software_reporter_tool.exe." I still have a version of the binary located at "%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\SwReporter\107.294.200" last modified 2022-11-02.

BadHumans 3y ago

I second this. This is a very strong accusation to have no proof.

cma 3y ago
Linked above, they apparently removed it last March but it was there for years and years.

grey_earthling 3y ago

Chrome isn't open source.

kuratkull 3y ago

Chromium is open source, Google adds some secret magic sauce to make Chrome.

bluish29 3y ago

I don't know but chromium is the base of chrome. Does google release chrome in an open way? Can't they (at least in principle) apply whatever patches they want before build and release?

doubled112 3y ago

https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome-cleanup/ https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome... https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwantedsoftware https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwant... > Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software. In addition, if you have opted in to automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google, Chrome will report information about unwanted software, including relevant file metadata and system settings linked to the unwanted software found on your computer. > System information includes metadata about programs installed or running on your system that could be associated with harmful software, such as: services and processes, scheduled tasks, system registry values commonly used by malicious software, command-line arguments of Chrome shortcuts, Windows proxy settings, and software modules loaded into Chrome or the network stack.

clucas 3y ago
This is interesting, I didn't know Chrome did this. But it doesn't back up the claim that "[i]f you have media or backup drives [Chrome] just constantly adds wear to them." Does anyone have anything on that?
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  As pointed out above, Chrome no longer does this... but adding wear is a natural consequence of any hard drive scanning process. SSDs are rated for a certain number of read/write cycles, and every time a block is read, it adds wear. Even spinning rust wears out eventually. Not knowing any details about how often Chrome did this, it is hard to say just how significant this wear would be compared to other normal uses of the media. But it is clear that wear would occur to some degree.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Not only does it add wear, it slows down other processes. People notice this after OS updates where the system re-indexes the volume after the update completes. It's also why most indexing processes do it late night or while the system is idle. For an app like a browser to do it is just rude.
  - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
    > SSDs are rated for a certain number of read/write cycles, and every time a block is read, it adds wear. Only write cycles cause wear, read cycles don't cause any meaningful wear.
    - ensignavenger 3y ago
      Thank you for clarifying that! I should have known that. So perhaps it wouldn't cause any meaningful drive wear, if the system didn't do a lot of writes. Still consumes CPU and power, though.
      - 3y ago

giancarlostoro 3y ago

When I realized that Microsoft Defender sends sample files for further inspection without keeping a history of the files I opted to just install Linux and move on. This alone gives me more reason to just only use Firefox exclusively like I always have been.

jcmoyer 3y ago

Anecdotally, Chrome used to pin my hard drive at 100% usage until I killed a process called "software_reporter_tool.exe." I still have a version of the binary located at "%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\SwReporter\107.294.200" last modified 2022-11-02.