Flash Popups and The Need For Flash on Macintosh

[Randy B. Singer]

Lots of folks lately are seeing pop-ups saying that they need to update Flash player on their Macintosh. I want to stress that you should *NEVER* update Flash on your Mac via a pop-up dialog box.

Very commonly malware, usually based on a Web site, but sometimes via adware, will throw up a message telling you that you need to update Flash in order to try and trick you into downloading malware.

thesafemac/fake-adobe-flash-players-persist/ (outdated link removed)
thesafemac/genieo-adware-downloaded-through-fake-flash-updates/ (outdated link removed)

You should *never* update Flash from a pop-up that appears while you are surfing the Web!!! In fact, you should never update Flash via any pop-up whatsoever. If you see a pop-up that says that you need to update Flash, you can check if you actually do need to update, and safely update, using the following directions.

If you are wondering if you already have the latest version of Flash installed, you can check in the Flash preferences pane, or you can find out which version of Flash you currently have installed, and what the latest version is, here:
Adobe - Download Adobe Acrobat Reader

There are only two ways that you should ever normally update Flash (both are fine):
1) Via the Flash Player pane (under the Updates tab) in System Preferences on your Mac
or
2) Directly from Adobe:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

If you are concerned about the viability of the copy of Flash that you have installed, you can uninstall the copy of Flash that you have installed with this uninstaller and then download and install a fresh copy:
http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html

Even though Flash's days are numbered, there are still an awful lot of Web sites that rely on Flash. Personally I think that it's too soon for most folks to be uninstalling Flash completely. If you follow the above suggestions, Flash should be completely safe.

By they way...if you are seeing Flash update notices unusually frequently, they are bogus (malware) notices. Flash is frequently updated, as necessary for security purposes, but I've never known it to be updated daily, or even weekly.

 

[badshoehabit]

I fell for this while registering for the ITV player (UK). Took me ages to get rid of the nasties but achieved thanks to a concurrent query on the forum.

 

[chscag]

I recently saw those popups that Randy is referring to. Of all places, it appeared on a web site that advertises using demo videos. I knew it was a scam right away because it kept popping up saying my Flash Player was out of date. I knew that Adobe never updates their Flash Player that way. It's a good reminder from Randy to be aware and not fall for malware.