Extensions may be slowing down your PC or even making it unsafe. Jonathan Parkyn reveals the browser tools that do more harm than good
Browser extensions are handy tools that add extra options to your browsing experience, such as blocking adverts or letting you watch films that would normally be blocked in the UK. They’re free, small and easily added to your browser with one click - but they may not always be the blessing they appear.
A recent spate of scares has revealed that extensions can secretly sap your PC’s resources or even make your computer unsafe. Indeed, Google yanked 200 extensions from its Chrome Web Store earlier this year after they were found to be stealing users’ data.
Here, we’ll unmask the browser extensions you should avoid, and suggest better, safer alternatives.
Remove Hola to make your PC safe
Free Chrome and Firefox extension Hola (http://hola.org) lets you bypass geographical restrictions imposed by sites such as Netflix, so you can view content wherever you are in the world. It’s amazingly useful, and we used to love it until it was recently revealed to be unsafe, exposing users’ computers to a number of vulnerabilities, including activity tracking and remote control by hackers. It has even been accused of enabling botnet attacks - find out more on Adios Hola (http://adios-hola.org), an independent site set up to warn users of Hola’s potential dangers.
Hola has since been pulled from the Chrome Web Store and Firefox’s Add-ons site; like many extensions, it was never available for Internet Explorer (IE). If you’ve got it installed, remove it now. In Chrome, click the menu button, select ‘More tools’, Extensions, then click the bin icon next to Hola. In Firefox, click the menu button. Add-ons, Extensions, then click Remove next to Hola.
If you want to continue beating internet restrictions, use free VPN tool CyberGhost (www.snipca.com/16917) instead.
Stop Hover Zoom tracking you
Hover Zoom for Chrome (www.snipca.com/16916) gives you instant enlargements of thumbnail images when you hover over them. With almost 1.4 million users, it’s a very popular extension.
However, scroll down the information panel to the right on the page above and you’ll see that you will be permitting Hover Zoom to collect your browsing data and share it with third parties.
Happily, you can disable this dubious data-collecting activity. Go to Extensions in Chrome (as described above), click Options under Hover Zoom, click the Advanced tab and then untick ‘Enable anonymous usage statistics’.
Alternatively, uninstall Hover Zoom and use Windows’ built-in Magnifier instead (click Start, type magnifier and press Enter).
Banish extensions that target you with adverts
Have you noticed of late an increasing number of adverts appearing on web pages you view? If so, your browser extensions could be to blame.
Extensions that are safe in Extensions that are safe in themselves are often bought from their developers then bundled with adware. This is exactly what happened to the ‘Add to Feedly’ extension, for example, whose developer revealed his regret about selling it (www.snipca.com/16943). It’s also been revealed that Mall Checker Plus For Google Mail now contains adware (www.snipca.com/16944) - as do many others.
One Chrome extension you should definitely use is Shield For Chrome (www.snipca.com/16922), which is free and blocks extensions known to be infected with adware or malware.
Delete uninvited extensions
Your browser may include extensions you never installed or authorised. Sometimes, extensions (like toolbars and search engines) are automatically installed along with third-party' programs, so check your extensions list regularly for anything that shouldn’t be there.
Even Internet Explorer, which supports far fewer extensions, isn’t immune from this problem. Click IE’s cog icon and select Manage Add-ons to see what’s installed under each of the Add-on Types on the left, then click Disable for any you don’t want.
If you’re unsure about a particular extension, type its name into the free online tool Should I Remove It? (www.shouldiremoveit.com) for further information about it.
If you’ve tried to remove an extension but it keeps coming back, you should remove the program that installed it. The YouTube download tool DVDVideoSoft, for example, is known to install browser extensions that can be very difficult to get rid of. We’d also recommend running AdwCleaner (www.snipca.com/16945).
PLAY SAFE WITH CLICK-TO-PLAY
Extensions often trigger Flash animations and other content that can slow down your PC and even make it unsafe. To reduce the risk, enable 'click-to-play' in your browser settings. This blocks Flash and other plug-ins by default, letting you play only the content you want.
As well as improving security, click-to-play can reduce bandwidth consumption and lower memory and processor usage, making pages load quicker and reducing the overall impact on your system speed.
To switch it on in Chrome, click the menu button and select Settings, then click 'Show advanced settings'. Under Privacy, click the 'Content settings' button. Scroll down to Plug-ins, tick 'Let me choose when to run plug-in content', then click Finished. Now you'll see a placeholder image (usually a grey jigsaw piece) where Flash animations would normally be. Right-click and select 'Run this plug-in' to load the content. A similar feat can be achieved in Firefox by installing the free Flashblock extension (www.snipca.com/16924).
In IE, click the menu button, then 'Manage Add-ons'. Right-click Shockwave Flash Object and select 'More information', then click 'Remove all sites', followed by Close. You'll now see a message asking you to permit Flash content whenever it's available on a page you visit.
WHY ADBLOCK PLUS ISN'T PERFECT
Advert-blockers like Adblock Plus (https://adblockplus.org) are among our favourite types of extension - but they're not without problems of their own.
Last year, it was found that Adblock Plus, with more than 50 million users, was guilty of inordinate memory usage. Its Firefox version is especially memory-sapping, consuming anything up to 2GB of RAM at a time.
Its developers have been working round the clock to improve the situation, and post regular updates in the Adblock Plus blog (https://adblockplus.org/blog).
Besides the memory issues, Adblock Plus is a brilliant tool, so this definitely isn't one to rush to uninstall. However, if your PC is getting on or slowing down and you need a more lightweight advert-blocker, try uBlock (Chrome www.snipca.com/16920, Firefox www.snipca.com/16919).
It's easy to find out if any extensions are hogging resources. In Chrome, click the menu button, select 'More tools' and then click 'Task manager' to see a list of tabs, plug-ins, extensions and other processes running in your browser. Click the Memory column header to see which processes are using the most system memory.
Firefox doesn't have a task manager, but the free extension 'about:addons-memory' (www.snipca.com/16923) performs a similar function. Once it's installed, open a fresh tab and type about:addons-memory for a list of what's gobbling up the most memory.