Tag Archives: flash

Apple reportedly disabling flash in updated version of Mac Safari

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Well it’s about time, Apple. Flash is been dead for a long time. Even adobe, the creator of flash, as stated that flash will no longer be supported. I’ve written many times in my blog about the evils of updating flash. I hope this will be the last time I write about it.

Flash player updates continue to be the number one method of infecting a Mac. Fake reports that your flash needs to be updated, still these days, caused many people to press that update button and go through the process of infecting them selves. Apple for quite a while, has had the ability to block these but hasn’t done so. It certainly is time that Adobe and Apple both deal with this problem. 

But the press continues to say there are sites out there that use flash that are valuable for people to use. In reality, these are often low hanging fruit sites that get pushed high in search ratings.   None of these sites provide any additional value to the user that you can’t find in other legitimate webpages. sites. 

I’m glad to see Apple stepping up and disabling flash internally in the browser. That will make a lot of difference but it still won’t keep sites from popping up the your flash player is out of date updates.

Whether you run a Mac, or a PC, just keep in mind the flash is dead and there is absolutely no reason to update your flash player and risk any kind of infection on your computer. I suspect, I go out on at least two calls every week that are all related to self infections of peoples on computers. I certainly hope this change from Apple reduces that number on the Mac side. Now we need Microsoft and Google to step up and do the same thing.

Bottom Line: Don’t Update Flash Player

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OK folks, it’s worth saying again, there are no dancing kitties or laughing dogs worth the risk of accepting an update to flash player. This specific post is going to cover updating your Mac flash player, but the same goes for flash player on the PC.  The only way to ensure that you don’t get caught from a scam flash player installer is to not update flash player.  

Analysts say that the the number one way that computers, particularly Macs get infected with malware is through flash player updates.  It usually happens like this. 

You’re surfing the web, perhaps looking for entertainment or searching for a product you want to purchase at a great price. All of a sudden you get a prompt that pops up telling you that your flash player is outdated and needs to be updated. This prompt looks completely legitimate. It looks just like the prompts from Adobe that you seen in the past.  But what you don’t realize is that it is truly a phishing scam it’s designed to look like a standard update.  If you click update, guess what? You’ve just infected your Mac with malware. Very likely you won’t even notice for a while because these type of infections typically download what’s called a “stub“.  This small program will run in the background and download other malware on to your machine. Perhaps it will change your homepage in your browser, maybe it’ll change your search engine to a search engine that looks just like Google but isn’t.  Maybe you’ll begin seeing pop-ups every once in a while. These are all signs that one click has infected your computer. 

This process is very similar on a PC. But typically, malware installed on a PC is much more advanced and can often search your computer for personal data and send it off to some website in the sky.

The answer is simple. Eliminate flash from your life. Resist the idea of installing, or updating flash on your machine. It just isn’t worth it. The risk of being infected from some of these flash player update prompts is much greater than any value you get from a little flash video.  You see the truth is, developer is no longer develop legitimate applications in flash. It’s old technology, it’s far from secure, and there are much better tools to develop anything current. 

But, there are millions of existing flash developed apps still out there on the web. Many of these are games that were developed 15 years ago when it was the only technology that would allow you to move things around on the screen easily. Even more might be ad platforms that allow people to use a JPEG and a link to purchase placements on legitimate websites. Whatever they are, the ability for you being able to see these is nowhere near worth the risk of problems installing flash player updates can cause.  

If you ever see prompts similar to this, ignore them. Move on.  There is plenty of content on the web for you to be able to see that doesn’t require flash player.

Often times, I finish a discussion such as this by describing the correct way to update your flash player. But I’ve recently seen so many of these infections on peoples Macs That I just can no longer recommend using flash at all. I’m sure you can search the web and find the correct way to do flash updates but my recommendation to you is to forget about flash, and forget about those puppies and kitties that often times lure us into clicking on things that hurt us.