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Yet another Adobe rant
Richard
Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,913 moderator
I got a popup message that I needed to update Flash. When I clicked on the installer, I noticed that without offering me any choice in the matter, it was also installing McAfee Security Scan (or something like that). I take computer security seriously but prefer to choose my own solutions, so I was not at all pleased. I ran a scan of startup items and found that, as I rather expected, a new McAfee product was set to launch every time I boot. Unfortunately, the product description was in Chinese. Next step was to uninstall the free gift, which appeared to be successful, but I'm going to be monitoring my system carefully for the next few days to see whether some garbage was left behind.
Flash has a long history as a security weakness, and since the Flash source code may have been compromised by the recent Adobe break-in, it's probably more important than ever to stay current. The update message recommended that I just let it install updates automatically, which I politely declined. Had I known it was going to install another product, I would not have been polite. Perhaps there was some mention of the intent in the popup message--they happen so often that I don't really read them. But there was certainly no choice given by the installer, where Windows users generally get to decline superfluous crap.
Now there's probably nothing at all wrong with the McAfee product, but I'm guessing that it doesn't do anything that my existing security software lacks and that therefore I don't need it. In any event, I am pissed that Adobe is installing stuff without my permission. That's just rude.
:humungus
</rant>
Flash has a long history as a security weakness, and since the Flash source code may have been compromised by the recent Adobe break-in, it's probably more important than ever to stay current. The update message recommended that I just let it install updates automatically, which I politely declined. Had I known it was going to install another product, I would not have been polite. Perhaps there was some mention of the intent in the popup message--they happen so often that I don't really read them. But there was certainly no choice given by the installer, where Windows users generally get to decline superfluous crap.
Now there's probably nothing at all wrong with the McAfee product, but I'm guessing that it doesn't do anything that my existing security software lacks and that therefore I don't need it. In any event, I am pissed that Adobe is installing stuff without my permission. That's just rude.
:humungus
</rant>
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BTW, is it possible to live without Flash? I know Apple tried to drive a stake through its heart and that there were high hopes for HTML5, but I've kind of lost track of how that's going.
Also, WHY does Flash need to be updated about every 20 minutes? and WHY does it crash so consistently in Firefox? DRIVES ME NUTS (and it's on multiple machines with different OS etc etc, so I know it's flash and not me :-/)
I don't have problems with Flash crashing FF. If you're not already using it, try installing the FlashBlock extension. It prevents Flash from running automatically, though that does mean an extra click when you do want to see something. For me, it's worth it--before I started using it I would see Flash gobbling up machine resources for stuff I didn't even know was running. Give it a try. You can always uninstall it if it doesn't help.
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