Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services, . Ask any tech question at facebook. One of the few remaining uses of Flash/Shockwave was to play old-school web-based games that were developed back in the day.įortunately, there’s a safer way to play these classic games using BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint web-based game preservation project. In coming updates, the actual Flash plugin will be completely removed from your browser, so make sure you get the latest updates when they are made available. You really don’t need to do anything in your browser unless you know you manually made Flash available, as they’ve been blocking it by default for some time now. Here are the risks Should you be using a VPN at home to protect against hackers? Behind the benefits Blocking browsers
Is Google's Password Manager safe? Here's how to protect your information online Traveling abroad? Here's what you need to know about your cellphone plan before you go Syncing your office and home computer has its perks - and cons.
If you own a website that relies on Flash to properly render, it’s pretty obvious that you’ll need to update the code to reflect the current standards if you want it to be relevant to the rest of the world. Some users may continue to see reminders from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their system. While there may still be some websites that you visit that require Flash to properly function, these should be older websites that likely haven’t been updated for years and likely won’t ever be updated. Since Adobe no longer supports Flash Player after 31 December2020 and blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning 12 January2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems. The major browsers will also completely disable Flash from running after the end of the year, so for all intents and purposes, it’s a dead technology. Some of the most amazing interactive experiences in the early days of the Internet were made possible by Flash – it was probably how you played your first web-based games - but in today’s world, it’s a huge security risk.Īt one point, it was so popular that many scams were focused on tricking users into "updating" Flash in order to see salacious videos, which was nothing more than a ploy to sneak malicious code onto your computer.īecause of security concerns, most major browsers started disabling or blocking Flash content some time ago while the industry migrated to the more secure HTML5 standard for multimedia coding.Īdobe’s support for Flash will end on Dec. 31, 2020, and the Flash Player utility will start blocking Flash content after Jan. QUESTION: With Flash expiring soon, what should I do to make sure my computer is safe?ĪNSWER: Adobe’s multimedia platform known as "Flash" was an instrumental tool in the evolution of the Internet that brought animation and video capabilities to a text-based world.