There are two levels of blocking: some recent plugins that you might choose to use are set to "Ask to Activate" and cannot be set to "Always Activate". You still should update them. Older plugins may be forced to "Never Activate" and are completely disabled. Firefox doesn't remove Adobe plugins from your system. Adobe's installer and uninstaller handle that. To update the Adobe Acrobat plugin, open your stand-alone Adobe Reader and use the Help menu to Check for Updates. The installer will automatically update the plugin during the process. To update the Shockwave Flash plugin, you can get a full installer on this page: https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html In the first table, look for the row for "plugin-based browsers" and you can use either the EXE or the MSI installer. To ensure that the old version is removed, please close any tabs that are using Flash, or exit out of Firefox, during the update.