End of story for The Great Suspender: the once-appreciated Chrome extension has been removed by Google because some versions contain malware.
Google has taken steps to delete a new Chrome extension from its Store. The reason: its code allegedly contains malware that undermines users’ security. The Great Suspender, the name of the extension, was designed to suspend Google Chrome’s tabs when not in use in order to free up RAM memory for the browser’s processes. It’s not the first time that Big G acts this way: in fact, there are many occasions in the past when the company immediately removed applications with dangerous content from its store, even without giving prior notice but preferring a more concrete approach to avoid the continuation of situations at risk to the privacy and security of its users.
The Great Suspender, what happened to the extension
The Great Suspender has always been considered an extremely valid extension in its genre. However, with the transition to the new owner, which took place in June 2020, the first problems arrived. In fact, the 7.1.8 update that came with the new management brought with it a nasty surprise for its users: a malware capable of recording some user information.
With the next release, 7.1.9, the manager had communicated the removal of the malicious code, trying to reassure users. Needless to say, many users, burned by the event, preferred not to believe their words and decided to keep the extension under control in order to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future.
With the spreading of the news, which took place in a massive way on the main information channels of the web dedicated to technology in January 2021, a large number of users who until now remained unaware of the incident have definitely decided to abandon the extension altogether, relying on other solutions available on the Play Store.
Just a few hours ago, however, some users who had remained faithful to The Great Suspender noticed its absence from their browser and, as confirmation, were able to verify that it had also been removed from Google’s virtual store.
The Great Suspender, how to recover open tabs
The problem that the latest users have been facing is that of recovering the open tabs that, with the elimination of the extension, have fallen victim to the abrupt closure by Google’s browser. As suggested on Reddit by a user, the solution to the problem involves a search in the history with the key “klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg”
In any case, the alternatives available on the Chrome Store are many, suitable to meet the needs of each user of Chrome. For those, however, who just do not want to say goodbye to The Great Suspender, there is the possibility of using the latest version of the extension deemed malware-free (i.e. 7.1.6) by downloading it from the GitHub repository and loading it into the browser in Developer mode, selecting the “Load Unpackaged Extension” item.