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Adobe Flash Verification: Overdoing It?

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Starting today, any website that has Flash enabled shows the icon (a little block shaped like a lego) that, when clicked, displays a message that says "Adobe Flash is enabled on (add name of website here)" and gives the options to block the plugin or continue allowing it.

Icon looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/3JvAIrE.png (note red circle). Usually my search bar looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/jw8mwYu.png (please ignore the red circle here, it's from an older issue, but that's what the bar is supposed to look like).

I have tried clicking "Continue allowing" but that doesn't make the icon go away (as it usually would). My plugins and browser are up to date as well, so what could be causing this?

Starting today, any website that has Flash enabled shows the icon (a little block shaped like a lego) that, when clicked, displays a message that says "Adobe Flash is enabled on (add name of website here)" and gives the options to block the plugin or continue allowing it. Icon looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/3JvAIrE.png (note red circle). Usually my search bar looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/jw8mwYu.png (please ignore the red circle here, it's from an older issue, but that's what the bar is supposed to look like). I have tried clicking "Continue allowing" but that doesn't make the icon go away (as it usually would). My plugins and browser are up to date as well, so what could be causing this?

All Replies (8)

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Hi ponyparty, Did the option for Shockwave flash change to "Always Ask" on the about:addons page?

Also you seem to have more than one plugin of different versions installed, please remove the older ones to see if this makes an improvement.

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@guigs2: The about:addons page lists it as "always activate"

Also, how do I remove older plugin versions?

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That notification icon has been there for several versions.

Did Continue Allowing used to make it go away? I guess I just ignored it and didn't try that.

What I suggest if you can tolerate it is to just let the icon sit there and ignore it, until such time as you want to see exactly what plugin(s) the page is using or modify its permissions.

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@jscher2000

Yeah, it used to. Either way, it seems to be showing up now on pages where it used to not show up (note that it doesn't seem to be hurting anything, it's just there).

And yeah, I've been mostly ignoring it.

That said, I still would like to know how to remove old plugin versions, since it appears from the previous response that I have quite a few of those.

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You can use the about:plugins page to track down the physical locations on disk of duplicate plugins. They might be side-by-side in the same folder, or might be in completely disparate locations.

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@jscher2000 Is there any way you could give more info on how to do that? I'm not very tech-savvy, so if you could show (either through screenshots or just telling me) me how exactly to use the about:plugins page to track things down, it would be much appreciated.

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Download the Flash uninstaller from Adobe - here: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

Run that uninstaller program. It will remove all versions of Flash from that PC. Reboot your operating system, then download and install the latest version of Flash for Firefox (the Plugin version), and for IE (ActiveX version) too, if you still use IE for anything that requires Flash.

Yep , it is a royal "pain". Adobe Flash is notorious for not cleaning up after itself during a Flash update - so much so, that Adobe had to create a separate application to clean out what it messed up doing during updates.

On a positive note, the need for Adobe Flash is slowly dying. Not allowed on Mobile operating systems, and will be phased out on desktop / laptop devices in the future. Between HTML5 and Firefox Shumway the need for Adobe Flash will be eliminated with newer programming technology that can't be exploited by the ne'er-do-wells out there.

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Hi ponyparty, if you open the about:plugins page and search in the page for flash (or whatever plugin you want to find), each should list the path on disk of the file, such as

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_15_0_0_152.dll

If you have multiple versions, the goal would be to track down and remove the older ones. However, for Flash, the method given by the-edmeister will give you a better result because it also will clean up the old registry entries that Firefox is using to find the plugin files.