I was using my girlfriend's Mac, and after she downloaded something, Chrome suddenly displayed a message saying 'Your browser is managed by your organization.' We looked into the Chrome policies and noticed one that seemed suspicious. It looked like it was trying to mimic her school, as it had a domain of 'schoolnameca.com' which should normally end with '.ca' since we live in Canada. The policy also indicated it was from a platform rather than a specific user. What steps should we take to resolve this?
5 Answers
As an MDM consultant, I can say that macOS typically doesn't support Mobile Application Management policies. If her device ended up in an MDM, possibly from an organization she's affiliated with, you can check under System Settings > General > VPN & Device Management for any management profile. If it’s something else, like a download restriction from an organization, check what type of file was downloaded. That could also trigger this message.
Is this a school-issued laptop? If she's logged in with her school account, that might be legit. Otherwise, it's worth investigating further.
To fix this on your Chrome, here's what you can do: 1) Open Chrome and type 'chrome://policy' in the address bar. 2) Write down any policies you see listed. 3) Close Chrome completely. 4) Open Terminal and run 'defaults delete com.google.Chrome [policy name]'. For example, if you see 'LocalNetworkAccessAllowedForUrls', your command would be 'defaults delete com.google.Chrome LocalNetworkAccessAllowedForUrls'. Restart Chrome, and it should no longer show the 'Managed by your organization' message.
I've got a personal MacBook too, and mine shows the same message in Chrome. Trust me, as someone who works in IT, I can confirm it’s not necessarily malware. I’ll dig around to see if I can find a reason for it, but I doubt it's something malicious.
This could be an indication that a device management profile was installed on her Mac. Check for anything like Intune in the settings to see if there's a management policy applied to her device.
It's not a school laptop, and she was logged in with her personal account.