What it is: At one time, Flash was the Internet standard for displaying animation on web pages. Now Flash is more of a security nightmare that requires constant updating.
Macromedia created Flash and conquered the Internet. That’s when Adobe bought out Macromedia specifically for Flash while killing their own Flash competitor called Adobe LiveMotion. Meanwhile, Microsoft tried to develop a Flash competitor called Silverlight because everyone wanted to define the next Internet standard for animation and video.
Unfortunately, Adobe Flash succeeded too well. Not only are most annoying and intrusive ads created in Flash, but Flash creates multiple security vulnerabilities to the point where the safest way to use Flash is to remove it altogether. If you want to remove Flash from your Macintosh, just follow the instructions in this link.
Clicking on this link will let you run the Adobe Flash uninstaller program. You’ll need to shut down all you browsers to uninstall Flash, but that momentarily distraction is worth the increased security. If you run across an occasional web site that still uses Flash, you may need to install it again, but a safer method is to run Flash inside a virtual machine running another operating system such as Linux. Now if anything tries to exploit Flash vulnerabilities, it will only be able to attack your virtual machine and not your actual computer.
Back in 2010 when Steve Jobs first banned Flash from the iPhone, critics and competitors were quick to point out the massive advantages to Flash and the benefits Android devices offered because they ran Flash. Notice how silent these same critics and competitors are now about the massive importance and advantages of running Flash? That simply proves they were wrong back in 2010 because their arguments never made sense to begin with.
If you value your computer’s security, don’t install Flash. If you have installed Flash, uninstall it. Your computer will be immensely safer as a result.