Why is Google Chrome covertly scanning my Hard Drive?

Question

Many don't know this because of (quietly running) solid State Drives now, but Google Chrome usually shows a high level of disk usage whenever I start it on my legacy desktop.I regularly hear a lot of noise from the drive. It is likely something that does damage because of the frequency with which it is run. It seems very invasive and there is no warning that it's occurring nor a way to disable it.Is it supposed to be some sort of anti-virus scan? It seems to be a strange trojan app running within Chrome browser. I also wonder what data is being sent to Google based on that activity, as I don't use their cloud storage or any other active services.

jitl · Accepted Answer

You can answer all of these questions by running a filesystem or system call trace on Chrome processes, which will be more accurate than listening for the file access with your ears. Without such evidence you are jumping to wild conclusions.
On macOS, use Activity Monitor to inspect the process and it will show you a list of open files. You can also use lsof, strace, dtrace, depending on your OS. I don’t know about Windows.
You could also try defragging your hard drive.

dTal · Answer

What makes you think it's scanning, and not e.g. preloading items from disk cache into RAM? Maybe run it under strace and see what it's accessing?

id_404 · Answer

Probably Chrome's built-in malware scanner: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/chrome-has-a-built-in-malware-...

r721 · Answer

"Google Chrome and ESET collaborate in fight against online threats
As applied in Chrome Cleanup, ESET’s technology is used by Google to alert users about unwanted or potentially harmful software attempting to get on users’ devices through stealth—for example, by being bundled into a download of legitimate software or content. Google Chrome, using ESET’s security technology, then provides users with the option to remove the unwanted software. Chrome Cleanup operates in the background, without visibility or interruptions to the user. It deletes the unwanted software and notifies the user once the cleanup has been successfully completed."
https://www.eset.com/sg/about/newsroom/press-releases1/event... (2020)

LightHugger · Answer

Chrome developed a "security feature" where it scans and phones home about every program on your computer by default.
Please stop using chrome. When other software does this, that software is labelled spyware.
However, it can be disabled in the settings, but only after you notice it when it's already scanned and uploaded for quite awhile...

ashwagary · Answer

Uninstall Chrome and install Firefox, see if it stops.

obsidience · Answer

In Windows, use this tool to monitor all filesystem and registry activity of a given process:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...

dole · Answer

if it's Windows, it's probably Software Reporter Tool (not part of Chrome on Mac or Linux?) which looks like it sits there, running and eating disk performance after starting and sitting idle on one about:blank tab. [edit: only extension I have installed in Chrome is Google Docs Offline. Software Reporter Tool is the same as the "Cleanup" tool/malware scanner noted by id_404 in this thread.]
https://geekflare.com/google-chromes-software-reporter-tool/
Open Task Manager, expand the Chrome task and look towards the bottom, and Disk column.

Yoric · Answer

Possibly simply checking its own cache?

johnea · Answer

There's an old, vulgar, southern aphorism that answers almost all of these "why" questions.
It's in the form of a retorical question:
Question: Why does a dog lick his balls?
Answer: Because he can...
Why "can" chrome scan your disk? Because you installed it.
Stop using that shit...