What is the "Software Reporter Tool" downloaded by Google Chrome?
After using Google Chrome for like about 10 minutes today, Symantec AV displayed a pop-up in the notification area with the text "software_reporter_tool.exe is safe".
I was not consciously downloading anything from the internet at the time and decided to take a look at the details of the notification. It turns out that Google Chrome had downloaded an 854Kb executable named "software_reporter_tool.exe":
I was not able to find much of any information on what this tool does.
Does it check what software I have installed and report that to Google?
Or something else?
Solution 1:
Taken from this forum:
Oh, I see - that is the .exe process for the software removal tool. This is a safe file.
You can simply remove the SRT app from your computer if you'd no longer like to use it. However, it is the most affective way so far to combat malicious redirection Malware in Chrome.
- Norton, as with any other anti virus, will conflict with SRT. You should only have one anti virus program running at a time.
- This depends on the application and greatly varies. For instance; Hangouts needs access to your mic and online status.
- You can uninstall SRT with Windows add/remove programs.
Solution 2:
The link provided in @Anon 's answer is useful but doesn't really say much about why a web browser scans the user's hard drive in folders that have nothing to do with Chrome, and taking up CPU and battery resources in the process.
They provide a bit more detailed sentence here:
It runs in the background checking for the malicious software and alerting you to run the clean up tool to remove it
Still it doesn't give out much information about how and why that program is there or how to avoid having it scanning your hard drive. So I wouldn't consider it safe, only because it comes from the vendor.
Solution 3:
Uninstalling or deleting or renaming the file will not work because it will simply come back when Chrome is updated. But it can easily be disabled as shown in the following link...
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-google-chrome-software-reporter-tool