Workstations making A LOT of requests to Google???

[BassTech]

We are on an RM CC4 network. Recently we have noticed that our workstations are making a lot of requests to:

 

google.co.uk
t2.gstatic.com
t1.gstatic.com
t3.gstatic.com
t0.gstatic.com
google-analytics.com
google.comkh.google.com
ssl.gstatic.com
clients5.google.com 
pagead2.googlesyndication.com
clients1.google.com

All of this is making up for around 30% of outbound traffic from our site, RM is our ISP and have said that this amount of traffic is unusual. We have scanned our workstations and servers thourghly for viruses but they're fine, which leads me to beleive that one of Google's software packages we have installed is causing it.

We have Google Earth and Google Sketch-Up on all workstations but the stange thing is even when no-one is logged onto the workstation these requests to Google are being made in the background, and after uninstalling all Google software from a test workstation the problem remains where it's constantly making requests to google :S

 

All Windows 7 Professional workstations.

 

Edited March 13, 2012 by BassTech

[pleach85]

Have you checked Task Scheduler? I find Google likes to put stuff in there!!

[AngryTechnician]

Can you give some examples of the specific URLs being accessed?

[Michael]

I've seen this happen on XP years ago. As above, check Task Scheduler and any Google related services.

 

You can easily add/remove Tasks using GPP and you can also disable services via GPO too. It should be easy to quickly resolve in a Windows 7/2008 R2 network.

[Michael]

Another place to check is the registry:

 

HKLM > Software > Microsoft > Windows > Current Version > Run

HKCU > Software > Microsoft > Windows > Current Version > Run

 

Again as above, you can easily add/remove entries using GPP.

[TheMinister]

Looks like requests from Google Toolbar.

 

Where are the requests originating from?

[X-13]

I think this is Google Earth related.

 

 

google-analytics.com and pagead2.googlesyndication.com are ad related.

[Duke5A]

Ditto on task scheduler. I've been looking for a replacement for Firefox for various reasons and decided to give Chrome a try in a lab that does web development courses. It installed the update manager (no way to turn this off in install) that is comprised of two services being listed in Services under Computer Management, and two scheduled tasks to activate the services. One task fires at every logon, and the other fires every hour. In the scheduled task description it states that those tasks will be removed when the Google product is uninstalled... it lies. I uninstalled the only Google product (Chrome) on my test system and the services and scheduled tasks persisted even after a reboot. The updater is even still present in Program Files.

 

You can try using Google's GPO templates to control the behavior of the updater, or better yet, remove the scheduled tasks altogether. Needless to say after this, Google anything won't be making its way into my base image anytime soon.

 

 

[monkeyjmagic]

Would this article help ? It suggests how to block info going to Google Analytics by altering host files ! -

You need to google "How_to_block_your_browser_from_sending_information_to_Google_Analytics" and pick the top article (sorry can't post links as this is my first post :-)

[BassTech]

I think it is Google Earth, as it keeps saying a new update is available. Just realised that you can download Google Earth without the updater built in so will make a new package with that version and replace the old one, see if that works..