The scanner doesn’t remove files automatically. When the scanner finds something that could be potentially malicious, it displays an alert to the user and asks permission to remove the suspicious file.

Software that tries to trick users into installing or piggybacks on the installation of some other program, or has features the user doesn’t know about, is considered harmful and “we will take steps to protect users from it,” Google wrote in its Unwanted Software Policy. Google defines user-friendly software as those applications that require the user to give explicit permission to install the software, are easy to remove, behave as expected, and are transparent about what user data is being collected and how it is being transmitted. That includes software such as pop-up ads, unwanted Chrome extensions, toolbars, and browser redirecting software. Intended for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, and 7, this tool removes software that may cause Chrome to crash, modify Chrome to install unexpected startup pages and toolbars, display ads that aren’t easy to remove, and otherwise change the browsing experience. Shortridge was referring to Chrome Cleanup, a heavily sandboxed version of the endpoint scanning tool from ESET that detects potentially unwanted software and offers to remove it and return Chrome to default settings. She’d noticed Chrome scanning non-system folders on her computer, including Documents, Pictures, and GitHub.

“Turns out quietly began performing AV scans on Windows devices last fall,” Kelly Shortridge, a product manager at security risk management company Security Scorecard, posted on Twitter over the weekend. Google had good intentions-improved security-but it should have been more explicit about what Chrome Cleanup is doing much earlier, instead of waiting until people started asking questions. Despite recent comments to the contrary, Google does not have a secret antivirus in the Chrome web browser, and it is not collecting information about the files on Windows PCs.

Disable google drive virus scan