By: Seth Whaley, Director of Marketing, IMPACT Technology Group
With the continual evolution of technology, there are technologies that become outdated. One such technology, which every person is either familiar with and/or uses on a daily basis, is Adobe Flash. Flash has long been one of the most hated technologies by technology-minded individuals, and rightfully so. Adobe Flash has time and time again been plagued with security weaknesses and loopholes that have allowed hackers open doors into multitudes of computer systems. Because Flash has been required by many popular sites until recently, YouTube and Facebook (Facebook still requires Flash for some video on their site) to name a couple, you more than likely are running a version of Flash – whether you know it or not. Flash has become so commonplace 
that it has been bundled in with several of the most popular browsers – but this all needs to change.
With the rise of HTML5 (the new standard for website coding), Flash is being pushed closer and closer to the cliff of their demise, and it can’t happen soon enough. With more and more popular sites (YouTube, Netflix, Many mobile users may have recognized that there were times when videos or websites may have not functioned the way that they had expected, and that is due to the fact that Flash was not included on iOS since it’s inception and has been removed from Android since 2012.
Now that most of your sites have no more need for Flash, I recommend disabling and removing it from your system. If you decide that you can’t live without those pop-up video ads or casual internet games, you can always re-install it – even though I STRONGLY suggest against doing that.
The following steps will help you disable Flash within your browser:
Chrome: Type chrome://plugins in your address bar. Scroll down to Adobe Flash Player. Click Disable.
Safari: Go to Safari > Preferences. Click Security. Click Manage Website Settings. Click Adobe Flash Player. Go to the When visiting other websites dropdown and click Block.
Firefox: Click the hamburger icon (three horizontal lines) in the upper righthand corner. Click Add-ons. Go to the lefthand column and click Plugins. Go to the dropdown next to Shockwave Flash and select Never Activate.
Internet Explorer: Go to the gear icon in the upper righthand corner. Click Internet options. Click Programs. Click Manage add-ons. Click Shockwave Flash Client. In the lower righthand corner, click Disable.
If you would like to continue with the process and uninstall Flash altogether, you can get a step-by-step walkthrough by going to the following links: Mac – https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html?PID=7103102 Windows – https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html?PID=7103102
