Running a Imac with Sierra ver 10.12.1. In the past 14 days apparently I have consumed over 200 Gig of Data. Today between 7:45 A.M. and 1:00 PM I consumed 32 Gig. Ten days ago when I was informed of my data usage by my provider; I changed my passwords on both my modem and my computer; assuming that someone in the neighbourhood was the culprit. Nada. The data usage didn't stop. Today; I checked my activity monitor and noticed that "com.avast.proxy" had uploaded 29 gig of data. What is with this? Is it a bug; or is it something on my end! I have since removed Avast from my computer! I'm now using McAfee as my anti virus program.
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Avast consuming vast amounts of data
- Thread starter theslaz
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Get rid of all your virus software as it's not needed. There are no viruses in the wild that infect your Mac. Those virus programs are only going to find Windows viruses probably in email but they can't infect your Mac. All you need to run is an anti Malware program. Malwarebytes Anti Malware is a free scanning program and is all you need.
com.avast.proxy filters most incoming and outgoing network traffic as part of its 'Web Shield'. Avast itself isn't doing all the downloading but a combination of many processes that are accessing the internet through the Avast 'Web Shield' proxy service. This can be turned off entirely by disabling the Avast 'Web Shield' and 'Mail Shield'. Avast itself uses little data to provide virus definition updates.
As first reply antivirus on a mac (at moment) is pointless and just uses up resources running a program that does nothing but use resources.
yes run malware bytes every now and then but that it.
Avast has got bit bloated of late on PC too.
yes run malware bytes every now and then but that it.
Avast has got bit bloated of late on PC too.
Thanks for the replys and concern. Here is the latest. Since my post on Wednesday; I have consumed 70 gig of data. Way over my limit of 300 Gig for the month; and I have 9 days to go yet for the reset. This is after deleting the program that i thought was the problem. Been running my activity monitor for the past 30 mins and have been recording my data usage. In these 30 mins; it indicates that I have used 5.1 gig of data. It appears that the process using this is "ocspd". I did some research on this; and it appears that this is a common problem. It was suggested that going into My Keychain preferences and disabling both "ocspd" and "crl" would clear up the problem. Nada. Since I disabled these two items; I have used another 2 gig. What I'm going to do is shut down my desktop ( Can't afford this; getting expensive) and will use my Laptop until I come up with a solution to this. Hoping that someone in this fine community will have an idea as to what is going on. I may start another thread in order to achieve this; as it is clear that Avast was not the problem.
Is it worth a time machine backup and a clean install them use migrate to pull back ur data?
I know long winded and maybe bit extreme.
Or is there a more advance network activity monitor that you can try?
Hope someone can help you out, I only been mac user for 6 months so not know much sorry.
I know long winded and maybe bit extreme.
Or is there a more advance network activity monitor that you can try?
Hope someone can help you out, I only been mac user for 6 months so not know much sorry.
I have only a superficial understanding of the ocspd process and have seen the posts elsewhere about the data use issue. It doesn't seem widespread.
How old is your iMac? Is your current system a clean install or an upgrade install? If it's an upgrade install what was the original, clean install OS version?
Have you tried running the iMac in a new user account to see if the issue exists?
How old is your iMac? Is your current system a clean install or an upgrade install? If it's an upgrade install what was the original, clean install OS version?
Have you tried running the iMac in a new user account to see if the issue exists?
I bought this computer new 5 years ago. It was a clean install. It has been only the past 2-3 weeks that I have had this problem. My average data usage for the past year has been about 150 gig. I'm now up to 360 gig; most of which occurred in the past two weeks. At 3:18 A.m. this morning my usage showed 356 gigs; now at 8:24 A.M. it has gone up to 367 gig. I'm going to turn my Wifi connection of for this computer and see what happens.
Turn off iCloud Drive: http://www.macworld.com/article/309...top-and-documents-access-in-macos-sierra.html
Turned of Icloud. In the past 1/2 hour, activity monitor showed data usage as over 1 gig; this is after I turned Icloud of.
Try downloading and running Little Snitch. It will tell you what is uploading stuff: https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
I think he knows what's moving the data. See above.
I'll wait to offer any more advice until after he's tested a different user account.
The latest. Have downloaded "Little Snitch" and have tried it in demo mode. ( works for three hours) That worked; as it appears I was able to disable the ocspd process. Doing that; I used very little data. However; this AM; when I used my computer; Little Snitch was no longer operational; within one hour; it appears that the ocspd process had used over 3 gig of data. I have tried to disable ocspd via "Keychain". In preferences for Keychain I disabled ocspd; it appears to have done nothing. After this message, I will open my new user account ( what a pain to set that up) and see what happens. Right now my data usage is at 400 gig. That is 100 gigs over my 300 gig limit. I've used over 200 gig in two weeks. This is not good!
[doublepost=1477740388][/doublepost]Switched over to my new user account. Little Snitch has reported that in the past 17 mins; 1.45 mb uploaded and 1.50 gig downloaded. It is showing that ocspd is the culprit.
[doublepost=1477740818][/doublepost]I have activated Little Snitch's network filter which is denying ocspd access; and there is no traffic being reported now for ocspd. This will only work for the demo period of three hours.
[doublepost=1477740388][/doublepost]Switched over to my new user account. Little Snitch has reported that in the past 17 mins; 1.45 mb uploaded and 1.50 gig downloaded. It is showing that ocspd is the culprit.
[doublepost=1477740818][/doublepost]I have activated Little Snitch's network filter which is denying ocspd access; and there is no traffic being reported now for ocspd. This will only work for the demo period of three hours.
There is a 9 page discussion of the problem here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5544915?tstart=0
with various solutions.
One is to go to System Preferences > iCloud > Photos > My Photo Stream. and turn that off.
There is another suggestion to delete out of date certificates from your keychain.
But there are others and you should read through the whole thread.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5544915?tstart=0
with various solutions.
One is to go to System Preferences > iCloud > Photos > My Photo Stream. and turn that off.
There is another suggestion to delete out of date certificates from your keychain.
But there are others and you should read through the whole thread.
Funny you should mention turning of my photo stream. That was going to be my next attempt at fixing this. Reason being; Aprox three weeks ago, I ran out of storage on my Iphone. One of the solutions I came up with was to stream all my photos to the cloud. I therefore turned that setting on! Appears that was about the time I started having this problem.
Thanks for your reply. I will read that article and see what it has to say.
Thanks for your reply. I will read that article and see what it has to say.
Turned it of. Ocspd does not even show now in both my activity monitor or in Little Snitch. Hopefully Photo streaming was the problem and this has corrected it.
[doublepost=1477755015][/doublepost]
[doublepost=1477755015][/doublepost]
Actually this was one of the first threads I read about this problem. This is where I got the idea to disable ocspd under Keychain preferences. Me thinks this just affected anything to do with Keychain, and not anything else that ocspd was connected to.
Appears everything is back to normal. In the past 24 hours my data usage has remained near zero. Me thinks turning of photo streaming corrected my problem. Thanks to everyone for their concern and help!
Just a update. Signed up with my provider (Telus) for unlimited data back on Nov 6. Didn't check my usage until a day ago. Would you believe that in 3 weeks I have used 1350 gigs of data? Thats over 63 gigs on average per day!