adblocker and cpu/mem usage alert

ashleey

Just in case anyone's mac starts freezing with the spinning beach ball and checks to find that safari has a memory usage of around 1gb and cpu usage near 100%, it is caused by the adblocker add in. It is trying to download a new version. You may need to be patient, as safari will be slow, and uninstall the add in and then reinstall and let it then download the new version.

I thought I had picked up a virus or that my memory had fried. Luckily neither was the case. It appears that others have had the same problem.

HTH

Talisman

A simple solution is to update your hosts file so that the call to the adservers are redirected to your own computer so the ads aren't loaded at all.

Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File

To use the file you just need to replace the existing file on your system: /private/etc/hosts

Be aware that the file contains a large list of sites, some of which you may not wish to block.

ashleey

Thanks for that. I've uninstalled adblocker and now use adblock extension which seems better. I'll try your solution. Thanks

Sad Professor

Yeah, any app that goes rogue like that has lost my trust forever and gets permanently nuked.

You should also check out GlimmerBlocker. It blocks ads before they even get to the browser, similar to the host file solution suggested above.

ashleey

Agreed. If an extension does that then I've no idea what bad things it could really be doing. I'll have a look at glimmerblocker.