[Dixonary] OT: Adobe Flash Player

[davidh]

It's not so very hard for bad guys to put Flash content on legit web sites which content exploits security holes in unpatched Flash installations that allow them to do bad things to your computer and files.

The following Mozilla support article explains how to tell Firefox to ask your permission to run any given particular Flash file/content on your PC. The idea is that if Flash content automatically tries to play on your PC and you yourself did not initiate (click) the request to do so, then this constitutes 'suspicious' behavior and might indicate an attempt to harm you. In which case you could 'protect' yourself by not giving permission when Firefox asks for your permission to play the Flash content in question.

Unfortunately this safety feature is not in older versions of Firefox so you would have to update Firefox (highly recommended).

Flash player is so notoriously buggy and insecure that it would be also highly recommended to both keep it patched up to date AND also make use of this safety feature of Firefox. I personally have all my FF plugins, not just Flash, set to "ask to activate" (or "never activate" i.e. block).

Some websites use Adobe Flash to display content. However, attackers can also use the security flaws in Flash to run malicious sofware on your computer and gain access to your system.

One way to protect yourself is by disabling or removing Flash, but if your trusted websites require Flash, you can change your plugin settings so that Flash runs only when you click to activate it.

Here’s how to set Flash to run on demand:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...k-play-firefox