Unfortunately, that Chrome scanning utility overheated my 2011 Macbook Pro and killed its graphics card. When the Chrome scan ran, it pegged the cpu at 100% and caused the fans to spin up to a very loud full throttle. However, the Macbook couldn't prevent the runaway overheating (the blue screen of striped lines from the death of AMD graphics card). Yes, the Macbooks from 2011 are notorious for having bad cooling design but everything was fine for 8 years until Chrome killed a $3000 laptop.<p>Fyi, the executable is <i>"software_reporter_tool.exe"</i> and it lives in:<p><pre><code> C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\SwReporter\
</code></pre>
I've disabled it on all my computers using the tips from google searches: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+scan+"software_reporter_tool.exe"" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=chrome+scan+"software_report...</a>
The title is alarming enough that I immediately searched for a way to block it.<p>Apparently, this is only specific to Chrome on Windows:<p>> [it] looks through your computer in search of malware that targets the Chrome browser itself using ESET’s antivirus engine. If it finds some suspected malware, it sends metadata of the file where the malware is stored, and some system information, to Google. Then, it asks you to for permission to remove the suspected malicious file.<p>Seems fairly reasonable.. At least I'm not affected by it, being primarily on Mac and Linux.<p>Another comment here mentions "Chrome scanning utility" on a MacBook though. Ideally I wouldn't use Chrome at all, but I need it for developing and testing web applications.<p>Just wanted to mention this open-source firewall (macOS application) called Lulu, with which you can (mostly?) block Chrome and other apps/services from phoning home behind the scenes.<p><a href="https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html" rel="nofollow">https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html</a>