# µBlock for Chromium **Foreword:** Using a blocker is **NOT** [theft](https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632). Do not fall for this creepy idea. The _ultimate_ logical consequence of "blocking = theft" is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. See [releases page](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases) for recent changes. See [Wiki](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki) for more information. An efficient blocker for Chromium-based browsers. Fast and lean. Written from scratch. Development through benchmarking. **µBlock is not an "ad blocker", it's a blocker in the broad sense**, which happens to block ads through its support of [Adblock Plus filter syntax](https://adblockplus.org/en/filters). µBlock [extends](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Filter-syntax-extensions) the syntax. _EasyList_, _Peter Lowe's Adservers_ , _EasyPrivacy_ and _Fanboy's Social Block List_ are enabled by default when you install µBlock. Many more lists are readily available to protect yourself from trackers, analytics, data mining, and more ads. Hosts files are supported. In my opinion, ads are just the visible portions of privacy-invading apparatus entering your browser when you visit most sites nowadays. My main goal with µBlock is to help users neutralize as much as can be privacy-invading apparatus (of which ads, "unintrusive" or not, are just the visible portion) for users who do not want to deal with more technical means like [HTTP Switchboard](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard#http-switchboard-for-chromium).
µBlock: page loaded. ABP: page still loading.
Image excerpted from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJr4hmPlgQ.
Chromium on Linux 64-bit
Opera 22 on Windows 7 32-bit
The screenshots above were taken after visiting links in
reference benchmark
plus a bit of random browsing. All blockers were active at the same time,
thus they had to deal with exactly the same workload. Before the screenshots were
taken, I left the browser idle for many minutes so as to let the browser's
garbage collector kicks in. Also, after a while idling, it's good to open the dev
console for each extension and force a garbage collection cycle by clicking a couple of times
the trashcan icon in the _Timeline_ tab (this caused a ~15MB drop for µBlock and Adguard in Opera)
as garbage collectors sometimes work in a very lazy way, so I did this for each extension.
Being lean doesn't mean blocking less.
For details of benchmark, see
µBlock and others: Blocking ads, trackers, malwares.