How Rid Myself of Fake Adobe Flash Player, or Do Trash Safari ?

Mac Forums, So, I got sucked into the Fake Adobe Flash Update and am suffering the consequences (i.e., new tabs opening up advertising stuff, continual auto-downloads of flashplayer.dmg files, even one instance of XXX rated garbage) when browsing using Safari. (I have since switched to Firefox as my default browser.) I've been reading some of the web postings on how to deal with this problem, and have made one or more attempts to follow fixes utilizing the Terminal command, but to no avail. Some blogs said to buy/download such-and-such anti-virus or hard drive clean-up software, but I then wonder if I can trust a recommendation from someone on some blog who may be just trying to sell me something or to download something even more harmful.

I have also thought about trashing Safari completely, but I don't know the impacts of that. Can I then download a new version of Safari? (I really like Safari as a web browser.)

Your experience with this, as well as your knowledge of the best (perhaps even easiest, cheapest) fix, is appreciated!


-Mike

Download MALWAREBYTES ANTI-MALWARE FOR MAC and run it, then delete the stuff it will show and get the proper Flash from the legit Adobe site:

MALWAREBYTES ANTI-MALWARE FOR MAC
https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/

Your Safari will probably then work properly again.







- Patrick
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Patrick, I followed your instructions, downloading Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and it found 5 Adware files which it then, at my consent, eliminated. Safari now seems to be operating properly, and also a second scan using Malwarebytes came up with nothing detected. ...Thank you so much! -Mike

Thanks for the feedback and it's nice to hear it worked.





- Patrick
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Also, you should never, ever, click on any prompt to install Flash. Get Flash from Adobe.com only and install it. When installed, it will show up in System Preferences. Configure it there to prompt when an update is available. DO NOT UPDATE FROM THAT, OR ANY PROMPT. When you get a notice that an update for Flash is available, open System Preferences and update from there. I don't let Adobe automatically update it, but that's a personal preference. If you want to allow Adobe to update automatically, you can set that from System Preferences as well.

But, again, NEVER, EVER, update from an unsolicited prompt for ANY software, EVER. Yes, I'm shouting.

^^^^

I finally got tired of Safari not allowing flash to play (what felt like) every 2-3 days every time flash had a new update and got rid of flash about 6 months ago. There really are not that many sites that still use only Flash. For the few that are, most of them I've found that I don't really have to see their video. For a few others, I just copy and paste the page into Chrome. Seems like I do that less often than I was having to update Flash.