Another Day, Another Adobe Flash Exploit

Flash used to be what I would call "Update of the Day Club".  Start your computer and get into doing what you need, and surprise of surprises, there would be an update window popping up for Flash.

We seem to be back to that.

It's a nuisance because with at least Firefox, it forces you to close your browser and go through the nonsense necessary to restart it.  Since Firefox isn't exactly 100% accurate in reopening pages and tabs, I hold my breath each time.

In this case, there's no reason to trash Firefox.  There was an exploit found with "Shockwave Flash" as it shows up in the addons page and it tells you it wants to be updated.


Except.


There is no update as of this writing.

So? What do you do?  Tread lightly, my friend.  What you need to do is put yourself through a bit of annoyance or uninstall the blighted software completely.

Since the annoyance is less of a problem than uninstalling Flash at this time, I'll show you how to do that.

What I am doing is to tell the browser to ask me to run it.  I was going to uninstall it completely.  Youtube does not use Flash as a default to play videos any longer, favoring the newer HTML5.  Facebook does use Flash and at this point it does not apparently use HTML5.

Here is how to go in and tell Flash to run when you want it.  It will leave an ugly placeholder in Facebook with the a grey Lego brick or the international symbol for no, and some warning messages, but you can always turn it back on to watch that particular video of a dog doing something cute if you really want to.




In Firefox:

In the address bar enter:   about:addons and hit enter to load the page.

On your Addons page:

• Find Shockwave Flash
• Click the button that most likely says "Always Activate" and select "Ask to Activate"
• click the link to "Check to see if your plugins are up to date" to open another tab.

On your "Check Your Plugins" Page

• Click the big red button that says "Update Now" under "Potentially Vulnerable Plugins" and follow the prompts to update your Flash.
• This space intentionally left blank.
• Flash will update through multiple steps that are documented on Flash's site.  
• They include downloading a program.  
• Make certain that you clear the box that asks if you want to download any "Optional Offer" like McAfee or any other "helpful" programs since they are not helpful and will simply clutter up your computer or it could even lock it up.
• Flash's install will require you to close your Firefox, so save your work.
• Note:  As Of This Writing, there is no update to Flash that will fix this problem.  That is why I told you to set Flash to "Ask To Activate".
• Flash will not be updated on Android, Apple's IOS, or Linux.
• Flash will eventually be updated on Windows 7 or newer, or Mac OSX... just not as of this writing.