Malware has become a huge problem nowadays. Almost everyday people get their computers infected by either downloading something from an untrustworthy website or by visiting an infected Web Page. As user data becomes more and more valuable, the frequency of malware attacks also increase.
There are many types of viruses that can infect your computer. Some are designed to collect data from your computer, some are able to direct your computer’s computing power to whatever the hacker wants to use it for. The latter type of virus was particularly useful for hackers during the cryptocurrency boom where hackers would mine crypto tokens using unsuspecting people’s laptops. Ransomware is another form of malware where the computer’s files get locked until a ransom is paid out.
In order to deal with such problems, we are constantly advised to always take precautions alongside investing in a decent antivirus. Although Windows Defender has somewhat reduced the need for an antivirus, only a small amount of people know that even Google Chrome has an inbuilt virus scanner.
It’s safe to say that a large number of people, perhaps a majority of the users on the internet use Google Chrome as their primary browser. Only a small number of people amongst these users might know that the browser uses its built-in malware scanner periodically to clean the junk that gets stored in your browser. That’s also how Chrome is able to tell you whether the site you’re visiting can be trusted or not. However, your browser’s scanner doesn’t have to be limited just to periodic use by the browser itself, you can actually use it to scan your system as well.
How to use Chrome’s built-in malware scanner
- First access the browser’s menu by clicking the three vertical dots on the top right corner of your screen, to the right of where your plugins would go.
- Inside the menu, click on ‘settings’ and inside the settings menu, scroll all the way down and click on ‘advanced’ to open advanced settings.
- Continue to scroll all the way down to the bottom where you’ll find the “clean up computer” option. This option will be under the “reset and cleanup” heading but you don’t really need for look for it as the cleanup option will be the last one in advanced settings.
- Upon opening the menu, just click on “Find and remove harmful Sofware” and it’ll perform a scan of your PC and inform you if it finds any issue after which you can take the appropriate steps to deal with the issue.
The built-in scanner for Chrome is a tool that can come in handy for a quick scan. If you didn’t know about it, open up your browser and give it a try, it works pretty well.