Active1 year, 7 months ago
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.
After using Google Chrome for like about 10 minutes today, Symantec AV displayed a pop-up in the notification area with the text 'softwarereportertool.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. If you’ve privacy concerns about this tool or if SoftwareReporter tool is using more CPU when running, you can disable it by removing the permissions already it has to do the scan, reporting and other stuff, here is how that can be done. Block or disable Google Chrome’s Software Reporter Tool. Softwarereportertool.exe is able to connect to the Internet, record keyboard and mouse inputs, monitor applications and manipulate other programs. Important: Some malware camouflages itself as softwarereportertool.exe. Therefore, you should check the softwarereportertool.exe process on your PC to see if it is a threat.
Does it check what software I have installed and report that to Google?
Or something else?
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3 Answers
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.
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AnonAnon
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:
![Tool Tool](https://www.windowsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/how-to-block-software-reporter-tool.png)
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.
golimargolimar
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...
Software Reporter Tool High Disk Usage
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