Brave creating junk folders in Program Files

[levicki]

Description

Today I have noticed some strange and suspicious looking folders in my C:\Program Files. You are now maybe wondering what that has to do with Brave, but it will be apparent soon enough.

The list of said folders along with that they presumably contain:

Folder	Name
chrome_url_fetcher_8232_282155152	Brave NTP sponsored images
chrome_url_fetcher_8232_2027332100	Brave Local Data Files Updater
chrome_url_fetcher_9724_618213108	? (empty folder)
chrome_url_fetcher_9724_1256538110	? (empty folder)
chrome_url_fetcher_9788_244745220	Brave Local Data Files Updater
chrome_url_fetcher_9788_980226689	Brave NTP sponsored images
chrome_url_fetcher_11540_326675690	Brave Local Data Files Updater
chrome_url_fetcher_11540_510077731	Brave NTP sponsored images
chrome_url_fetcher_12180_973283506	? (empty folder)
chrome_url_fetcher_12180_1079940708	? (empty folder)

They are all dated February 8, 2023. All extension versions are the same according to their manifest.

I never noticed such folders before, and they most definitely do not belong to C:\Program Files.

I have found these related discussions elsewhere:
https://groups.google.com/g/chromedriver-users/c/K9bAr_2WbC4
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=778150

Steps to reproduce

1. Use Brave

Expected result:

1. I expect Brave not to use my C:\Program Files as a %TEMP% folder.
2. I expect Brave not to download and install extensions for things I did not enable and do not use
3. I expect Brave to not hide its own extensions from the Extensions page.

Reproduces how often:

No steps to reproduce

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave	1.48.167 Chromium: 110.0.5481.104 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	46de4a7f41979e829b430bc1ee30ef483aa227ac-refs/branch-heads/5481_77@{#19}
OS	Windows 10 Version 22H2 (Build 19045.2604)

Version/Channel Information:

N/A

Other Additional Information:

N/A

[methanoid]

Six months and still doing it.... is nobody bothering to fix?

[methanoid]

EDIT: Nevermind, just installed from the brave website and it installed in correct location and dumped userfiles in AppData

ALSO: Still produces LOADS of those junk folders in Program Files dir :-(

@levicki can U also let me know how your Brave installs in Program Files cos mine doesnt
I install with WinGet and it goes C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware which is a DUMB location but it might be fault of WinGet guys ;-)

[GATOQSECOMIO]

Same problem here (11 folders in 1 days).

I found more information on reddit here : https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/10euwk1/chrome_bits_folders_in_program_files/
And here:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1409335

[kenherbert]

This has been reported a couple of times recently on Reddit too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/163e0ql/after_installing_brave_browser_on_my_desktop/

https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/15e8ymc/brave_creates_chrome_url_fetcher_folders_in/

Some interesting things to note - one user is on Windows LTSC (but they are the admin user so nothing locked down). The other user may have Brave installed to a non-standard location. So non-standard Windows and/or install location may be part of the issue.

Doing a bit of searching this looks to be an upstream issue as there are many more reports of it for Chrome/Chromium. (Issue is tagged as such, but not many may read the tags so I'm mentioning it explicitly).

[levicki]

@methanoid I have reinstalled Windows in the meantime (I am now on Windows 11) which also means fresh Brave install, and so far I don't have those folders in Program Files anymore.

I am able to install Brave to Program Files because I am running as a user who is a member of Administrators group and I have UAC fully disabled (EnableLUA = 0 in registry).