[ale] [OT] A frightening thing

[JEFFREY LIGHTNER]

I recently became aware Google Chrome stays active even if you close it.   I had to go into Chrome settings to disable that.   I also modified services to not start automatically at boot.  I only use Chrome for the few sites that don't like Firefox.

Worse yet I found Google Crash Reporter (both 32 bit and 64 bit) starts automatically at boot even when I tell it to  not do that.   What I did that seems to work is went to the services then told it to open the folder containing it.   There I renamed the exe files so it can't find them on start up.  Online reading suggests the crash reporter is actually spyware and complains about the fact that things like Symantec AntiVirus label its executables as "safe" rather than blocking it as it should.   

Also I found that Firefox was not clearing cache and history  automatically when I exit which  bugged me.  FF is my browser of choice and I usually tell it to clear on exit in the settings.  It's conceivable I somehow missed that check box on installing on this new laptop back in May but isn't like my usual paranoid self.  I realized something was amiss when Facebook started giving me ads for things I'd searched for in Firefox when Facebook wasn't active.

Now I hit Ctrl-Shift-Del often just to be sure I'm clearing in any browser I use.

P.S.  MS has great gall to put nagware about using their latest Edge release on any other browser I open.   It would be bad enough if they asked once and let me say "no" but they only give the "maybe later" option so ask every time I open another browser or sometimes if I just login to MS-Office.  




> On 09/01/2020 6:37 PM DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 8:59 AM Leam Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> >>> Anyone familiar with this? Solutions that move away from a company
> >>> that collects and sells things they shouldn't?
> 
> Recognizing it is a problem is the first step to recovery.
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