This is how the Chromium viruses are created and it is also the reason why it is often rather difficult to find out what is wrong with a computer infected by a Chromium virus because most people wouldn’t suspect that anything based on Chromium would threaten their systems. However, the fact that the Chromium code is freely available to anyone means that hackers and cybercriminals could also access it, modify it, and use it for their nefarious goals. Those browsers include Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and even Microsoft Edge. Many of the current most popular browsers (not counting Google Chrome) are based on Chromium. The idea of open-source software such as Chromium is that anyone could access its code and modify it to create new programs. Is Chromium a virus?Ĭhromium is not a virus – it is an open-source browser project which is basically the Alpha version of the Google Chrome browser.

Unfortunately, there’s a very high chance that scammers, hackers, online crooks, and other cybercriminals may get their hands on your information after it has been transmitted to them by the Chromium virus. On the other hand, you won’t get any information about who your data is sold to by the Chromium virus or how it would be used. Also, the third-party partners of legitimate browsers that collect user data are also trusted advertisers that abide by the law. However, they try to be transparent regarding the types of data they collect, the third-parties they send it to, and the ways that data would be used. Admittedly, most popular browsers, including the regular Google Chrome, do this as well. In addition, the Chromium virus is likely to gather different types of data from your computer and distribute it to third parties without your permission. In some cases, the search engine might seem like Google but actually, be a modified version of the Google search engine that is programmed to show you aggressive and unsafe ads in the search results or outright redirect you to unfamiliar pages whenever you perform an online search. Also, the starting page, the new-tab page, and the default search engine of the browser would probably be different from the ones that used to be in your browser. For instance, random ads, pop-ups, and automatic redirects are likely to disturb your browsing. Once you start it, it would look and mostly behave like Google Chrome but there will be certain differences. This is because the Chromium virus actually “becomes” your Google Chrome browser by replacing its shortcut with a fake one that seems like Google Chrome but is actually a shortcut for the Chromium virus. Once you get infected by the Chromium virus, you will probably not notice any significant change until you start your Chrome browser.

Gmod can chromium give viruses