One of the things I tried to do (before giving up and posting here), was to rename the User Data folder (under “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome”), and when I did I was able to start Chrome in normal mode without getting the alert as well, but as soon as I signed into Chrome with my Google account the alert came back.
OK what is happening there is that the malware is backed up in your sync folders, you will need to reset those
I would suggest that you delete the synch data, reset chrome and then re-enable synch
Unfortunately I do not use chrome so I do not know how to do that but I believe that there is a delete button on the dashboard
Thanks essexboy. I traced the problem to a chrome extension. Posting my experience so it might help someone else with the same symptoms:
I deleted the sync data, reset chrome, then signed in again. The problem came back, but there were a few seconds of quiet while my info was being loaded (between the time I signed in and the time the first alert sounded), which led me to believe it was one of the chrome extensions that was triggering the alert. I disabled all extensions and verified that I could surf with no alerts, and then re-enabled extensions one at a time to identify the culprit.
The chrome extension that was triggering mal:url alerts was “Orbvious Interest 1.9” (“Mark pages to read later. The fastest and most reliable Pocket (Read It Later) extension for Google Chrome”). I had used it for years with no incident so I suspect this may be an avast false positive, but I use “Save to Pocket 1.9.1” now so I had no problem getting rid of the old one.