steamwebhelper.exe. A safe process?

[Electric Gigolo]

I know it's vital to Steams web brower. But, this process has all the makings of a trojan or spyware.

Why are there so many processes of it running?

Why is it comsuming huge amounts of ram? (150-250mb)

Web helper? It should say. Information or online activity gatherer.

Is there anyway to kill or block this process without messing up Steam?

Thanks.

[TeKraken]

Yes it's safe.
It came out of beta during the last update.

How much ram do you have?

[Satoru]

Its the browser

Just like chrome

Just like IE

[Electric Gigolo]

Originally posted by TeKraken:

Yes it's safe.
It came out of beta during the last update.

How much ram do you have?

8GB.

[Spirit]

I'll answer these questions.

• I've only seen 4 Webhelper processes, and that was after a lot of activity. This is the same way Google Chrome works with creating multiple processes.
  
  
• The more you browse around, the more RAM it uses, restarting Steam should put the RAM usage back down.
  
  
• Are you wearing a tin-foil hat?
  
  
• No, you cannot kill or delete the process and still use Steam.

There have been plenty of other threads regarding this.

[Electric Gigolo]

Originally posted by Spirit™:

I'll answer these questions.

• I've only seen 4 Webhelper processes, and that was after a lot of activity. This is the same way Google Chrome works with creating multiple processes.
  
  
• The more you browse around, the more RAM it uses, restarting Steam should put the RAM usage back down.
  
  
• Are you wearing a tin-foil hat?
  
  
• No, you cannot kill or delete the process and still use Steam.

There have been plenty of other threads regarding this.

I just want to know if it's needed and can I block it. If it's only for Steams web browser, which I never use.

"Are you wearing a tin-foil hat?" No. But I don't like processes that collect online activity.

[TGC> The Games Collector]

Originally posted by Spirit™:

• No, you cannot kill or delete the process and still use Steam.

Odd, I've killed the process several times with the Taskbar, and Steam went on just fine without it. Library still works, games still run.
I just rather have all my memory available when booting up a game.

Sure, the darn thing starts back up again with eating memory and CPU the moment I browse the steam store or community again, but I haven't run into any client-breaking issues so far by closing it.

Might be a good idea to auto-close it when starting up a game. The small ones I don't mind, but the community page sometimes loads up to 1 GB. Bit much...

[Electric Gigolo]

Blocking the process in windows, for me blocks the browser and community access. Also, logging in to Steam takes longer and sometimes it fails, but when it does login, it tries to download an update.

Steam has no business knowing my web browser activity.

[TeKraken]

Originally posted by Electric Gigolo:

Steam has no business knowing my web browser activity.

Who says it does?

[Spirit]

Originally posted by ♫TGC> The Gritty ♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by Spirit™:

• No, you cannot kill or delete the process and still use Steam.

Odd, I've killed the process several times with the Taskbar, and Steam went on just fine without it. Library still works, games still run.
I just rather have all my memory available when booting up a game.

Sure, the darn thing starts back up again with eating memory and CPU the moment I browse the steam store or community again, but I haven't run into any client-breaking issues so far by closing it.

Might be a good idea to auto-close it when starting up a game. The small ones I don't mind, but the community page sometimes loads up to 1 GB. Bit much...

If that works for you, that's great, but other users have reported that it starts back up without doing any browsing.

I've never had it use 1GB of RAM either, whenever I do notice an increase in usage, I just restart Steam which fixes it.

Nothing is stopping you from killing the process, but don't expect a stable client if you do so.

[TGC> The Games Collector]

Originally posted by Spirit™:

Nothing is stopping you from killing the process, but don't expect a stable client if you do so.

I guess it could depend on which one, I got 3 webhelpers running and I only close that specific one that goes up in crazy amounts. meh, maybe the main community store page will be a bit crazy.
But yeah, I've been restarting the client more frequent too these days because of this issue. An end to my long run of 24/7 connection.

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by Electric Gigolo:

Why are there so many processes of it running?

Each one does a slightly different job. It's something like one's for page rendering, one's for Javascript, etc. It uses the same model as Chrome, and it uses the process isolation to improve security and reliability.

Web helper? It should say. Information or online activity gatherer.

No it shouldn't, because it doesn't gather information about your online activity. You have no evidence for that, so you're just making stuff up.

Also, can I point out that if you're going to be paranoid about Steam collecting information on you, you've presumably been running Steam all this time anyway. Steam.exe itself could have collected any information that the web helper processes could. If you're going to do paranoia, do paranoia right.

[Electric Gigolo]

Well, thinking that steamwebhelper is collectiong data is "doing paranoia right". It possibly collecting outside information about websites I have visited, that have nothing to do with an online gaming client service.

Now that you have cleared it up. I will keep my tin foil hat and Guy Fawkes mask in with my other statements of paranoia and anti establishment tomfoolery.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Electric Gigolo:

Steam has no business knowing my web browser activity.

Steam client IS a browser.