How to permanently remove Avira Web Protection from Google Chrome?

Question

When I installed Avira a while back, it came with the Avira Web Protection browser extension, which installed itself in all my browsers without warning.

Ironically, now that I've uninstalled Avira five months ago, this extension seems to be as hard to remove as a virus.

I can uninstall it, but everytime I start over with a new Chrome profile, the extension is installed again and Chrome asks if I want to activate it.

If I refuse to enable it and remove it, it will come back when I delete my Chrome profile. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome, and the extension was still there. I've uninstalled Chrome and created a new Windows user account, then installed Chrome again, and there it is, asking to be enabled.

I've looked in (and deleted) AppData\Google\Chrome, as well as in (without deleting them) C:\Users\Default\AppData, and C:\Program Files (x86)\Chrome, and found nothing resembling a default extension or having "Avira" in its name.

I'm not exactly looking forward to nuke my whole system because of dishonest practices by an antivirus vendor.

Where can this extension be installed, and how can I permanently remove it from my system ?

Answer 1

Here's how to uninstall globally installed Chrome extensions: https://www.howtogeek.com/140464/how-to-manually-uninstall-a-globally-installed-chrome-extension/

Make a system restore point and preferably also a full registry backup before messing with the Windows registry.

In summary, for an extension that doesn't provide a way to remove it through the Add/Remove Programs control panel, you want to navigate to this location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Google\Chrome\Extensions (On 32-bit versions of Windows) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Google\Chrome\Extensions (On 64-bit versions of Windows)

Each key under there is a globally installed Chrome extension, the long alphabetic string isn't random so you can search for it online to know which extension is corresponds to.

For instance this is the id for Avira Web Protection: flliilndjeohchalpbbcdekjklbdgfkk. As described on this site for instance: https://crx.dam.io/ext/flliilndjeohchalpbbcdekjklbdgfkk.html

Just remove the key for the unwanted extension and it won't pop-up in new accounts (I recommend exporting any key before deleting it so you can easily fix any mistake you make.)

If there was a path subkey under that gibberish key you removed, it points to some related files that you can now go delete. Otherwise you can search under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data for the extension string and you'll typically find related files to delete.

Answer 2

I finally chose to Nuke It From Orbit with Windows's Reset feature, while keeping my files. I reinstalled Chrome and there is no trace of Avira.