As 2019 will be soon upon us, Adobe Flash is coming closer to its inevitable demise, as the company will pull the plug of the famous web plugin in 2020.
Adobe’s Flash Player has been a pivotal plugin that helped in shaping the web as we know it today. It was used for animations, audio and video clips, and in some cases even entire websites. In the recent years, major security issues have plagued the player, as it was easy to hack, allowing malicious entities to infect users with a variety of malware and becoming well-known security vulnerability.
What put the final nail in the coffin was HTML5. HTML5 offers increased performance, it’s easier to learn and use, and it is a lot safer than Flash. After a mass migration of most websites to HTML5, Flash has started to look like a relic of the old days. While some browser games, legacy sites and ads still use it, those numbers are quite small.
Since Flash will be soon completely abandoned, the security breaches will become even bigger. When accessing Flash content, most browsers will ask for a confirmation that you want to run the plugin before displaying the desired content.
In order to protect your system you may want to disable Flash. You can set your browser to mandatorily ask for permission before displaying Flash content, or even disable it completely. Read below to learn how.
Safari
Permission setup: Go to Safari/Preferences/Security, and click on the Website settings tab. Select Adobe Flash player on the list and set the When visiting other websites option to ask. Click on done and you are good to go.
To disable: Repeat the same steps, but change the option to Block. Click on done and continue browsing.
Firefox
In this case, mandatory permission is on by default, so no change is needed.
Edge
Edge will only allow you to disable the plugin completely. Go to Settings/View Advanced Settings and switch the Use Adobe Flash option to ‘’off’’.
Modern browsers will automatically update Flash Player, so stay away from any suspicious ‘’update’’ notification when visiting a website. They lead to a fake update that installs harmful malware on your system.
Henry Lares is still early into his career as tech reporter but has already had his work published in many major publications including Tech Crunch and the Huffington Post. In regards to academics, Henry earned an engineering degree from Apex Technical School. Henry has a passion for emerging technology and covers upcoming products and breakthroughs in science and tech.
