Today I was surprised when I saw a GoogleUpdate.exe in my taskmanager. A little bit research brought to light that it was probably installed with the gmail video chat feature without asking and that it not only checks for updates but also sends some data to google.
I had to deactivate the GoogleUpdate-Plugin in Firefox and the sheduled Windows task.
Does anyone know which data it sends to google and what's the response of google regarding the question if this behaviour is evil or not?
I was really shocked because I thought of myself as a person aware what he is installing and what not and I didn't really care about Anti-spyware, Antivirus and other software, but it's so easy to get cheated into installing things I don't want by some good looking piece plugin.
Are there some lightwight and generic Tools which alert me whenever something gets installed in my sheduled tasks or similar?
P.S. There was already a similar Thread in the forum which was closed because of inactivitiy:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/140004.html |
This is a stupid feature from Google because you can't turn it off. I often spend several minutes per day to kill its process. Sometimes there are up to 7 "GoogleUpdate.exe" running, rrrr... |
You can avoid installing software that uses the updater: Gears, Earth plug-in, Chrome (use Chromium instead, which includes Gears). |
I don't think users know when they download those software or read the licence that they will also automatically install a malicious auto-starting program.... |
Ionut: Thanks for the link to yourinteresting article.
You forgot the GTalk and Gmail-Video-Chat Plugin which install the updater as well, and I suspect every comming Google Software will use this updater as well.
Most of us are on one of google services regularly, so why can't they just make a Widget for gmail and other google services which only shows up when there is an update for one of the tools we use?
I deactivated it yesterday on the sheduled tasks and I've also deactivated the Google Update Plugin in Firefox and still today the Updater was live again.
I found a entry in the registry "run"-section and deleted it as well, I wonder if it will not start again now.
3 for most user hidden places to deactivate a Google Software, this looks very evil to me.
Philip and Tony: Is this not relevant for most blogoscoped readers or have I just not found the article covering this potential privacy issue?
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