Google just launched Chrome’s The Great Suspender because it is malware

RIP for a great Chrome extension

People love to joke about Google Chrome consuming a lot of RAM, but there is definitely a little bit of truth to that, especially if you are a guide accumulator. I currently have about 40 tabs open and 20 extensions installed, and the Windows Task Manager reports that Chrome is using almost 3 GB of RAM. I have a lot of RAM on my PC, so that’s not a problem for me, but for those of you who run Chrome with 8 GB or less of RAM installed, you may run out of memory for other programs. Fortunately, there are some solutions to this problem. You can close some tabs, but that means you won’t be able to pick up where you left off easily. Alternatively, you can use an extension like The Great Suspender to suspend the tabs, freeing up some memory. If you are one of the many who loved The Great Suspender, then we have some bad news: it’s probably malware.

For some people, this is nothing new. Since November 2020, followers close to the extension have warned that it may be running malicious code. The former maintainer of the extension sold it to an unknown party in June 2020, and users claimed that the unknown party silently placed some trackers in version 7.1.8 of the extension. Although version 7.1.9 removed the tracker, many users were understandably suspicious of the extension. So, in early January this year, several media outlets took the news, and many, including me to me, decided to abandon it. Earlier today, however, Google completely removed the plug from the popular Chrome extension, forcibly removing The Great Suspender from people’s Chrome installations and removing the extension list from the Chrome Web Store.

Many users on Reddit and Twitter report that The Great Hanger has been removed from their PCs. Two topics on Reddit’s subreddit / r / Chrome are full of comments from people complaining about the sudden decision, as the removal resulted in the closing of all suspended tabs. Fortunately, there is a way to recover your suspended tabs, as pointed out by Redditor / u / avatar_ENG. Just open your search history and search for “klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg”. If that doesn’t work, you can try the other options described here.

If you’re looking for an alternative to The Great Suspender, the community member TheMageKing – who brought the malicious changes to light in November – recommends Tabs Outliner, Auto Tab Discard or Session Buddy. If you enjoyed using The Great Suspender, you can also manually compile the latest known secure version of the extension (7.1.6) from the GitHub repository and load it by activating Chrome developer mode and selecting “load unzipped extension”. The pre-compiled version of 7.1.6 is available on the Chrome Web Store under the name “The Marvelous Suspender“, but we cannot guarantee its safety.