How can I get rid of the Flash player?

[MikeFromMesa]

@Mike

You said:



When I look at your image and read the the incredibly small print at the bottom with a powerful glass, it says things like " this is a modified installer" and "a third party product" - words to that effect. In fact trying to read it all, I'm totally convinced that this has nothing to do with Adobe.

That statement will come as no surprise to you and certainly not to my many senior friends who have already commented on this thread.

Either this 'Ad" is coming to you on the back of some site you visit; or from some tiny piece of software previously downloaded to your Mac which is initiating this Ad every time you go online. Obviously just my opinion If I'm right, then searching for "Flash" on your system will not detect it because it will have another "name".

Can you just remind us what, if any, Ad Blockers & Tracking blockers you have on your system please?

Ian

Yes. I commented on that earlier in this thread. I have searched through my machine and am convinced that Flash is gone so searching for it would not help and any malware pretending to be Flash would probably have a different name.

I use MalwareBytes and I have DetectX on my system. Neither of them find anything but I am not sure if they are particularly good as Ad Blockers. I am pretty close to just doing a factory reset and rebuilding my Mac. I got used to doing that when I had a PC and used to do it every year or so but I have never had to do it before on a Mac so this is a surprise for me.

I guess those who spend their time infecting other people's machines have finally gotten around to the Mac.

 

[ferrarr]

Turn them all off. Then as you learn what they do, turn them on if they are beneficial to you. Or uninstall the ones you are sure you don't want. Also, read my post #18.

 

[IWT]

When I look at the extensions I see a ton of them

I suspect that you are looking at the "wrong" extensions Did you Open Safari, then Click on the Safari Icon in the top menu bar and choose "Safari Extensions"?

What you should be doing is Opening Safari > then going to "Safari Preferences" > then clicking on Extensions - as in the screenshot below.



Ian

 

[MikeFromMesa]

I suspect that you are looking at the "wrong" extensions Did you Open Safari, then Click on the Safari Icon in the top menu bar and choose "Safari Extensions"?

What you should be doing is Opening Safari > then going to "Safari Preferences" > then clicking on Extensions - as in the screenshot below.

View attachment 30863

Ian

I did both. The first took me to the App Store to GET or BUY extensions. When I checked the second all I found were 2 extensions, both used by Parallels, which I have on my system. Nothing else to indicate that some extension is doing this.

I will install some ad blockers and see if that fixes the issue but I am more and more inclined to assume that if my system is compromised in one way (generating all of these "Flash" messages) then perhaps it is compromised as well in a more serious way, and the only way I know to fix that is to start over. I just am not anxious to go through all of that trouble.

- - - Updated - - -

Turn them all off. Then as you learn what they do, turn them on if they are beneficial to you. Or uninstall the ones you are sure you don't want. Also, read my post #18.

It turns out there are only 2 and they are both Parallels extensions so they should be valid.

 

[ferrarr]

It turns out there are only 2 and they are both Parallels extensions so they should be valid.

Then you will want to keep those.

 

[MacInWin]

That only affects "opening" files, not downloading them.

Yes, but image files at a website are automatically downloaded as part of the site. What that check is designed to do is to prevent the launch of malware that can be embedded in the image file that might be considered "Safe" by some folks. And one thing that might be just that malware is a download launch to bring a more malevolent package down automatically. So I have that box not checked to prevent that sort of thing.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

I took the advice and installed an ad blocker. The one I got came from the App Store (AdBlock Pro for Safari) and it seems to have fixed the issue. I will have to do more checking to make sure it really stopped the downloads but so far, so good.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Kenney]

I had a similar problem with popup adds. they are more than likely Java scripts than Flash. When on the website that you are having this problem look at the address bar at the top when it occurs. This will show you the address of the offending add. Copy the address of the add and report it to the Website admins. If you're Router allowed you to block websites block this address there.
KenK

 

[jpdemers]

When I look at the extensions I see a ton of them but I have no idea which are valid and which may not be valid.

You've installed extensions without knowing what they are and what they do?
You can probably solve this by deleting all of them, and seeing if a clean Safari does the trick. (You'll be losing the extensions anyhow if you re-install the OS, so why not try this first?)

 

[Lifeisabeach]

You've installed extensions without knowing what they are and what they do?
You can probably solve this by deleting all of them, and seeing if a clean Safari does the trick. (You'll be losing the extensions anyhow if you re-install the OS, so why not try this first?)

This was clarified in followup replies. He was confused and was looking at a list of extensions in the App Store that were available to download. The only actual extensions in use were a pair for Parallels Desktop.

 

[SleeperSS]

Subscribed...same issue.