Chrome - phone home

On every Chrome installation, Google squeezes in a scheduled task to "phone home" unde the form of Chrome Updater (.exe). This is to be done regardless of if Chrome is active or not.

. start->all programs->accessories->system
. task scheduler/scheduled task
. "google update" task
. delete it, if you dont want Chrome phones home as when it wants

Note, this is not part of Google updates, and it will not be shown under startup processes or services

cheers ...

 

Yeah, someone found that out already. Just delete the scheduled task and then GoogleUpdate.exe won't run.

 

If phoning home is an issue for you, Chrome has bigger problems than that.

When typing in the address bar, for each letter you type, it contacts Google to get suggested urls and search terms.

Of course the same thing happens when you use the search box on google.com. But now it happens for the browser's address bar too.

Also, at least three other Chrome features are going to be contacting Google: phishing filter, send usage statistics, and show suggestions for navigation errors. However, these three are easy to turn off by unchecking the boxes in Options > Under the Hood.

 

Chrome also writes into the System Volume Information directory:

http://www.planetx64.com/index.php?...temid=69&g2_itemId=14591&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

To prevent the above and auto-update features, if desired, install Chrome into a limited account.

 

Errr, isn't that a good thing? It helps you figure out what you are searching for, it gives accurate spelling and it saves you time. That's one of the best features Chrome has that the other Browsers don't.

And for all I know, all of Windows OSs could be "phoning home" to MS.

No one is ever secure, no matter what OS or program/application you use. Look at Apple's iPhone for instance...w/ their snapshot taking!

 

Well, it just depends what you want.

The updater is a good thing too, if you want to get updates as quickly as possible.

If you're more concerned about phoning home than about getting new features, then they're not good things.

I just can't see worrying too much about the updater phoning home occasionally when the address bar is phoning home all the time. That's all. Although I killed the updater anyways... I don't really care much about the phoning, but I just don't like extra crap running in the background for every little program I use.

 

You are probably right, but that isn't enough to entice me to throw up my hands and say "The heck with it. Google can have everything I type and do on the internet."

Where I can avoid or disable spyware, I will.

Edited to add:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/

This fellow has a pretty good opinion of Chrome. I still have reservations given Google is probably the largest advertising profiler in existence - attemting to dump persistent cookies from nearly every corner of the internet. I have questions about how Chrome handles cookies, espessially third party cookies, which the browser only offers the option of "restrict how third party cookies are used." Restricted how? And why does Chrome write to the System Volume Information directory, a directory that is normally unavaible to even an administrator?

As the author points out, its open source nature should eventually provide answers.