If you’re interested in understanding why Flash Player was so problematic, read on to discover the saga of Flash Player.įor years, Flash Player has been a major vector for malware, and bogus Flash Player installers and updaters have served as Trojan horses to infect Macs and PCs. When updating this article, we decided to leave the remainder as is, for historical reasons. But you should no longer worry about Flash Player, no matter what websites tell you. Flash Player was long used to serve malware, on both macOS and Windows, because of the frequent updates needed to the software. Any supposed Flash Player update you see is malware. If you see something like that, DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE SOFTWARE. Yet you may still come across websites claiming that you need to update Flash Player, and offering to allow you to download it. And from January 12, 2021, Adobe has blocked Flash Player content from playing on computers where that software is installed. UPDATE: As of January 1, 2021, Flash Player is no longer supported. Software & Apps How to tell if an Adobe Flash Player update is valid