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Submitted by v.laurie | Last update on 14th July, 2015 - 1:07am

 

Have seen a lot on this subject recently which suggests to me that there may be some mileage in seriously considering this as another step or piece in ones security/defenses.  The questions I suppose for now is how much will doing this impact ones browsing...and there is only one way to really find out...try it.  After all, if one finds that one cannot do without the vulnerable old 'Flash' then one can always reinstall it.

 

http://www.techsupportalert.com/files/images/pc_freeware/techtips/flash-uninstall.png

 

"The time has come to think seriously about removing Flash from your PC. Your system will be more secure and will probably run faster.

 

At one time Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) was an important adjunct to web sites and was found all over the Internet. It is probably present on the majority of PCs.  But the coming of the native video features of HTML 5 and the constant parade of security problems with Flash mean that its day is coming to a close. Flash is also a heavy user of CPU resources and is a drain on batteries. All in all, the once-ubiquitous Flash is looking more like a detriment than a useful feature. It is time to assess whether you should keep it. Unless you have specific need for Flash, many security experts are recommending its removal and here is how to do it."

 

 

Full Article
With Firefox, there is an alternative to uninstalling and that is to set Flash to 'Ask to Activate'. That way if the page you are on has embedded flash you will just see a grey box and be prompted to activate. You can choose whether you want to or not and it's a good way to decide if you really need Flash.  I use BBC iPlayer that depends on Flash and so I enable it there but manually activate it elsewhere if I feel the need to watch a video.

 

I am led to believe that it is much safer used this way as malware needs Flash to be on by default to do its nasty business. That said I entirely agree with Baldrick and hope that we will all soon be able to uninstall this exploitable addon and not have to patch it every five minutes!

 

Not sure about Chrome (where Flash is integrated in the browser) or IE where disabling altogether may be the only option.

 

On a related note, I did decide to uninstall Adobe Reader the other day and am very happy with SumatraPDF which is much slimmer and faster and will not need constantly updating either. A bit like comparing Webroot with some of its bloated rivals! 😃

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