14 DAY TRIAL // It might sound unbelievable, but it’s really happening: Adobe is getting ready to pull Flash Player in just a few days, so beginning January 1, this product is officially unsupported.
What’s more, starting with January 12, Flash Player would no longer play any content, and Adobe says absolutely all users out there are recommended to remove it as soon as possible.
The decision to give up on Flash Player was officially announced three years ago, and since then, both Adobe and browser developers, including here the likes of Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple, worked together to pave the way for a world without Flash.
And now that Adobe is ready for this big change, browsers have also prepared to abandon Flash Player.
Adobe explains giving up on Flash Player is something that just had to happen because of the alternatives that evolved a lot lately.
“Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content. Also, major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Flash Player). See Flash Player EOL announcements from Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla,” Adobe explains.
“By providing more than three years’ advance notice, Adobe believes that there has been sufficient time for developers, designers, businesses, and other parties to migrate Flash content to new standards. The EOL timing was in coordination with some of the major browser vendors.”
As a result, all major browsers will also disable Flash Player next month, and Adobe says the most secure way to go for everybody is to just uninstall the software completely. Since no security patches would be shipped, keeping Flash Player on the device could expose the data, as hackers might attempt to exploit any unfixed vulnerability with crafted files specifically created for their malicious purposes.
Adobe emphasizes users themselves need to uninstall Flash Player from their devices because otherwise, it’ll just stay there forever, even if the content is actually blocked from running it.
“Flash Player may remain on your system unless you uninstall it. Uninstalling Flash Player will help secure your system since Adobe does not intend to issue Flash Player updates or security patches after the EOL Date. Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021 and the major browser vendors will continue to disable Flash Player from running after the EOL Date,” Adobe explains.
As a summary, here’s what you need to do next:
- Uninstall Flash Player as soon as possible from your computer
- Update your browser to the latest version
- Avoid downloading Flash Player from other sites since content would be blocked anyway
The decision to block Flash Player content on January 12 makes sense because there’s a good chance not everybody removes the unsupported software by that point. In order for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in Flash Player, they need to trick people into opening a crafted website in Flash Player, so by blocking this capability, Adobe makes sure such attacks are disabled from the very beginning.
So there you go: Adobe Flash Player is gone, and the world is finally ready for a world without it.
Flash Player has been for too long the software with the biggest number of vulnerabilities, not only exposing users’ devices but also slowing down computers every once in a while. While its demise is likely to take some people by surprise, including here web developers, there’s no doubt we can survive without Flash Player and it’s all just a matter of time until everybody understands it.