Have you seen this message on your computer?
If you haven’t seen a message like this on your Mac or PC yet, you probably will soon. This message begs a few other questions; Is it OK to uninstall it? What is Flash anyways?
This message makes it sound like Flash player is going away, and indeed, it is. It’s not that it’s vacationing in Florida for the Winter, it’s that we just don’t need Flash anymore. So what is Flash?
In brief, Flash Player is software and Flash is a file type created by software giant Adobe, the same people who brought us Photoshop. Flash was designed way back in the early years of the World Wide Web, you know, in 1996. As you may know, the World Wide Web was (and still is) built from a coding language called HTML. But in those early days, HTML did not support dynamic content like interactive games or even simple videos. You might have played one of these games on Facebooks’ website, or watched one of these videos on a site like YouTube. Adobe stepped in and created Flash to make this possible. At the time, this was good, we needed Flash.
Flash Player made it possible for your browser, the app you use to surf the Web (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.) to play those games and videos. Think of Flash Player as an accessory to your browser. Just like your vacuum cleaner has accessories for special purposes like those tight spaces you can’t normally reach, Flash Player enhanced your browser with a special ability to read Flash files when a given website hosted them. Just like you need Word to open Word documents (.docx), you need Flash Player to open Flash files (.swf). Here’s an example: A news website you visit has a written new story with an embedded video included for additional coverage. The web master who created this website posted the video in Flash file format, and because your browser has the Flash Player accessory installed, the video plays just fine. If your browser did not have Flash Player installed, then you can’t play the video and you get an error message instead.
Most people have had Flash Player installed on their computers for decades. You might also remember that Flash Player needed to be updated about every 5 minutes. OK, I like to exaggerate, but Flash Player was seriously needy software, which is one reason why it’s good that Flash is retiring. You see, just like software evolves, coding languages do too. HTML now supports interactive games and video content, and it does it better than Flash did. So we don’t need Flash anymore, and Adobe knows that, too. So that’s why you will sooner or later see a message like the one above as Adobe is officially ceasing development, and even prompting, the removal of Flash Player. So, yes, it’s OK (and encouraged) for you to click that Uninstall button and be done with it. Your computer may ask you for a password to remove Flash, after all, you are changing the software on your system, and this may require authorization of an administrator. This would be the same password you use to sign on to your computer when it first boots up.
I should briefly mention that there could be some sites out there still using Flash, but I would think and hope that they would communicate with their site members to hold off on uninstalling Flash if that were so. Adobe has given website builders a couple years to transition over to HTML, so sites that are still using Flash are waaaaay behind.
OK, there is one more reason why it’s good that Flash retire, and it’s even more important than the first reason. If you remember, the first reason was that Flash was needy, it needed to be updated quite often. Here’s the juicy detail: malware makers knew that, too. Malware makers exploited the high update frequency needs of Flash Player, and over the years, have tricked tons and tons of people into installing malware apps alongside of legitimate Flash Player updates. Here’s how it went: You visit a website wanting to watch a video or play a game, etc. and you get a message saying that your Flash Player needs to be updated. So, you follow the link and click the Update button, and in the days that follow, you get all these pop up windows asking you to scan your system for viruses. Additionally, your browser home page looks different, and you get all these strange ads as you surf the Web.
Sound familiar? So you call Gregg (that’s me, the author), and he removes the malware but leaves you with a lecture about not following pop-up ads on websites asking you to update Flash. But how could you have known? You didn’t install malware on purpose! The malware makers tricked you… they did give you the Flash update that you needed, but they bundled one or more malware apps with it. This is the other reason that it’s good for Flash Player to retire, it lowers the opportunity and probability of us getting tricked into installing malware as we try to update Flash.
Now, super important for everyone to understand… the malware makers will now have to figure out a new way to trick us into installing their malware. On the down side, we don’t know yet what that new scheme will look like. On the plus side, we know that we can’t get malware from updating Flash anymore when there is no Flash to update. However, malware makers I think will bet that many people will not have read this article, will not understand that Flash is retired, and will continue for some time presenting messages that Flash needs to be updated to unsuspecting users.
Let me put it all together now… If we know Adobe has told us that Flash is retired, and yet as we surf the Web we get a pop-up window telling us that Flash needs to be updated, guess what that means…? Well, 100% of the time, it means that a message to update Flash is a trick, that we will install malware if we continue and follow the link. Did I mention 100% of the time? Yes, a message like that from now on is always a trick, 100% of the time. Don’t follow any link to update Flash Player!! If you do see a message asking you to update Flash, there is no reason to panic, just close the window, quit and reopen your browser, and try again to resume whatever you were doing previously.
It remains to be seen how malware makers will shift their tactics to a new trick once people get savvy enough in regards to Flash. I’ll let you know once I know, so stay tuned. Stay safe out there!