Starting to panic a little bit... Random audio ads playing in background?

[Slydude]

My guess, you'll have your web browser open.

That's my guess as well. Check the web browser to make sure pop up blocking is on. Even with that turned on a new window will sneak through once in a while. I have even had some appear under the main window.

 

[vansmith]

That's my guess as well. Check the web browser to make sure pop up blocking is on. Even with that turned on a new window will sneak through once in a while. I have even had some appear under the main window.

This is a good point to remember. Pop-up blockers aren't perfect and once in a while, something will sneak through. Pop-up blockers aren't smart enough to know what's good and bad and this shows sometimes. The only way to stop them completely is to use it in conjunction with an ad blocker and something like NoScript but that's overkill unless you know what you're doing (especially with NoScript).

 

[emilyrkelley]

The ads are getting to me!

I only noticed these ads a couple days ago and thought it was just Spotify ads, but closed the program and nothing.

Chrome seems to be coming up consistently in posts I read about this and I have been keeping an eye on my activity monitor. While I have no idea what I am looking for I am wondering is the PepperFlashPlater (Chrome Plug-In Host) could be the culprit? It jumped to the top of my activity monitor when an ad just played. Can't find anything to support this theory tho...

 

[chas_m]

I would start by getting rid of Sophos, it's not doing anything except taking up resources.

You're running SOMETHING in the background that needs Akamai download management stuff. That's the source of this issue.