How To Use Google Chrome Malware Scanner

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While malware can affect pretty much any aspect of your operating system, it’s doubly frustrating when it starts to affect the performance of your internet. Here’s how to use the Google Chrome Malware Scanner in order to make sure Chrome is running at maximum efficiency.

If you’re experiencing lower speeds than usual with Chrome, you may want to look into using the Google Chrome Malware Scanner in order to remove any potential issues and ensure that you’re not being bogged down by any malicious software related to the browsing experience.

The Google Chrome Malware Scanner is run as a scanner called “Cleanup,” on Windows. In order to perform a scan, navigate to the URL chrome://settings/cleanup in your browser, or go to Settings > Reset and clean up > Clean up computer. If your browser seems to be lagging or otherwise slow, you should give it a shot and see if it helps out.

It’s important to note that the Google Chrome Malware Scanner will only address issues with the browser itself and won’t have much an effect on malware that is affecting the rest of your computer. It’s still a useful utility, however, and may make this one aspect of keeping your computer healthy an easy experience.

A blog post from Google announced the feature back in October of 2017.

“Unwanted software impacts the browsing experience of millions of web users every day. Effects of this harmful software are often quite subtle—search results are modified to redirect users to other pages or additional ads are injected in the pages that users visit. But in some cases, the changes are so severe that they can make the web unusable—people are redirected to unwanted sites full of ads, and it can be next to impossible to navigate away from these pages.

Chrome already has tools to help people avoid unwanted software. For example, Safe Browsing prevents many infections from taking place by warning millions of users. But sometimes harmful software slips through.

Recently, we rolled out three changes to help Chrome for Windows users recover from unwanted software infections.

We worked with IT security company ESET to combine their detection engine with Chrome’s sandbox technology. We can now detect and remove more unwanted software than ever before, meaning more people can benefit from Chrome Cleanup. Note this new sandboxed engine is not a general-purpose antivirus—it only removes software that doesn’t comply with our unwanted software policy.”

It’s good to know that you have a tool that is actively working to protect your browser. This utility runs automatically from time to time, but it’s worth giving it a manual run if you’re noticing your browser running behind.

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