Adobe Flash update...

Hi,

I hope this in the right place. Maybe it should be in Apps and Games but not sure. Please move it, if that's the case.

I've got a MacBook and I'm running OSX 10.7.5 (I have an older machine). It seems I'm prompted by Adobe to update Flash about once every week or 10 days. Without doing that I cannot look at any video on my computer, like Youtube. It doesn't seem right or normal that they bring out new versions or updates weekly, so what's up with this? It's a pain to get it updated and it doesn't work all the time. I feel like dumping all my Adobe files and starting over. Is there a better program/utility to use than Adobe Flash? When prompting me to update, they put all sorts of little ovals all over my screen saying, 'Flash out of date'. It doesn't seem like the actions of a responsible company; it's more like some sort of spam or some virus. What's with that? Or are they just a bunch of dinosaurs?

Thanks,

Bob M.

Others who are more familiar with this may chime in here but I'm a bit suspicious / puzzled here.

Updates every week to 10 days sounds odd to me. I always suggest to folks that the go directly to the Adobe site themselves for updates rather than letting another site direct them to the down load. I suspect that at least some of these sites are trying to get users to download their version of the Flash installer which probably includes whatever nasties they can think up.

Can you give us an example of a site where this is happening?

That is about right Bob. Currently the version is 18.0.0.203.

You will see tht under Flash Player, bottom line of System Preferences. Make sure you click on the option to "notify Me' rather than automatic update.

Yes, thanks for the location of the version of Flash that I'm using - it matches what you said. Of course, I'll download any new version from the company's website.

What other alternate choices are there to using Adobe Flash? It seems to me there must be something else that's as good or better than Flash.

Am I the only one who is getting these strange things onscreen from Adobe to prompt me to update my Flash player? That seems strange as well. Why do they need to update it so often; can't they find something better to do with their time. It's also odd that the Flash player is completely disabled until you update. It does not work at all and you cannot watch any video. Imagine if Apple did that every time there was an operating system update; not a good business practice.

The example I gave of a site I try to use to watch video in my original post is YouTube.

Thanks for the replies,

Bob M.

As I mentioned in post #2 above I suspect most, and perhaps all, of these updates are not coming from Adobe itself but from the site you are viewing at the time. Adobe updates Flash from time to time to address security issues / ad features but certainly not every week or ten days.

Can you give us the url for a site where yo are seeing these updates? perhaps we can check to see if we get similar notices.

Try downloading Adware Medic run it and see if it finds anything odd.

If you take a step back and look at what has happened over the last 10 days .... Adobe patched nearly 20 vulnerabilities in 1 week.
That should ring a bell ( or two ).
I have dropped Flash as soon as HTML5 came about and I haven't looked back since. I have learned to navigate the web without Flash.
The biggest advantage for me is that I don't have to worry about updating Flash ( like in the old windows days were I was working for the machine to allow the machine to work for me )

Flash should die totally .... soon..... before serious accidents happen.

Just my 2 ( Euro) cents.

Cheers ... McBie

Sly, I've been getting notifications of Flash updates about every two weeks myself. I only get the updates from the Adobe site through System Preferences, but I still get the notifications pretty frequently, and more so in the last couple of months. I am also at 18.0.0.203. And the notices come from Safari most of the time, not the websites. If the website tries to invoke Flash and there is an update pending, Safari blocks it and throws up the notice. I think Apple started that about a year or so ago. I'd get rid of Flash but I have one streaming website for classical music that uses Flash for the audio, so I'm hanging in there with it.

Agree with Jake and some web sites do need Flash, particularly Contract Bridge sites to which I seem to be addicted! Safari and System Preferences send the message about updating, no web site and the update is done via System Preferences.

The only suggestion is make sure you do not allow the Automatic Update, but choose the second option Notify Me.

Wow. Didn't realize there had been that many updates recently. Haven't been doing a lot with sites that need Flash lately--especially since more and more video is moving to other forms.

It's the description of several ovals that puzzled me. Though some sites might have several Flash windows which could each have their own warning oval I guess. It might help to know some of the sites involved just to see if that's what's happening.

I read 'news' on a site called Zite from time to time. They have a Mac page and today there were a couple of articles on people in the tech world calling for the end of Flash. What I don't understand is how to know if an application needs Flash to work or not. I like to watch music videos on YouTube and without flash I cannot do this. Is there another program that I can download that will do what Flash does? Is HTML5 a program? I have an older MacBook so I'm probably not able to use that.

YouTube dumped Flash for HTML5 years ago. You do not, repeat, do not need Flash to watch anything on YouTube. Just turn off Flash in your browser and go to YouTube, the videos will still work just fine.

How do I 'turn off' Flash in my browser?

Go into Sfari preferences > Security > Internet Plug Ins > Allow Plug Ins Website Settings and you can highlight Flash Player and click the little box lower right to 'Disable'.

I've started getting them progressively more frequent to almost 1 or 2 a day these days. The web sites are most where I look at any videos, or even just shopping on line, Amazon and such. The browser flips me into another page and automatically downloads adobe_flashplayer_e2c7b_setup.dmg. I've downloaded flash from Adobe site 10 times in the last 2 months. I've read on these forums that this Adobe FP sits inside the browser, I use chrome, latest update on yosemite, chrome, adobe, etc.

I wish someone would know how to remedy this issue.

Thx for help in advance.

How do I disable this in chrome? I didn't find it in settings or extensions. Any ideas?

Good call Slydude, I downloaded "Adware Medic" and she found lists of "stuff" to cleanout. I rebooted after the first clean and ran it again, she found nothing the second time.
I'll give do more internet roaming and report back if this fixed my problem with Adobe Flash multiple upgrades/downloads.

Regards,
Kevin

Found this too in Chrome, how to disable flash..

Adobe Flash Player plug-in

Adobe Flash Player is directly integrated with Google Chrome and enabled by default. Available updates for Adobe Flash Player are automatically included in Chrome system updates.

If you want to use Adobe Flash Player in other browsers, you’ll need to separately download the Adobe Flash Player for those browsers.

Enable or disable Adobe Flash Player
These instructions apply to Google Chrome on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.

Type chromelugins in the address bar to open the Plug-ins page.
On the Plug-ins page that appears, find the "Flash" listing.
To enable Adobe Flash Player, click the Enable link under its name.
To disable Adobe Flash Player completely, click the Disable link under its name.
Note: If you've previously installed Adobe Flash Player separately, you'll see two files listed for the plug-in. If both are listed as enabled, the version bundled with Chrome will be used. To enable a specific version of Adobe Flash Player, click Details in the upper-right corner of the page. Then click the Enable link for the version of Adobe Flash Player you want to enable. The table below shows the filename for the version that is integrated with Google Chrome.

Platform Adobe Flash Player plug-in integrated with Chrome System plug-in
Windows pepflashplayer.dll NPSWF32.dll
Mac PepperFlashPlayer.plugin Flash Player.plugin
Linux libpepflashplayer.so libflashplayer.so
Chrome OS libpepflashplayer.so libpepflashplayer.so

If your installation of Flash is up to date what is being downloaded is either malware or a Flash install "loaded" with crapware and other malware. Just throw them away, or better yet, use Ghostery to block the download in the first place.

Just reading through this thread and I checked my version at 18.0.0.232 Is this newer or older than 18.0.0.203 ?

Yes it is newer, and that is the most current at this time.