Probably, last week the notice was received to install yet another update of the Flash Player but, this time, besides the usual security patches, something important changes. The Flash Player is the plugin to make it possible for browsers to view flash content, videos and animations, including games. This Flash Player is developed and distributed by Adobe, one of the most powerful companies in the IT world, behind only Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Adobe Flash Player is one of the most installed technologies on computers all over the world also because it is mandatory to put it not only on Windows PCs but also on Macs and computers with Linux. The dominant position of Adobe Flash has always been opposed by Apple and has recently been declared obsolete and outdated by new emerging technologies such as html5.
Adobe, to repel the pressure of new technologies, (Youtube can now be seen in HTML5) has increased efforts to improve the Flash Player and has released an important update with Flash Player 18 .
What you need to know is that, after the installation and after restarting the computer, a new entry appears in the Windows control panel, with an icon called the Flash Player . Someone rightly will be able to define this a real invasion of this program which, silently and without saying anything, is installed on the computer. However, from now on, finally, you can manage the flash player from your PC especially from the point of view of security and privacy settings .
From the options window that opens by going to the Flash Player of the control panel, you can:
1) Manage the local memory settings and therefore the sites that are authorized to store information on the computer.
By clearing the cache, the permissions are reset.
2) Management of website permissions to use webcam and computer microphone .
Here, too, you can browse sites that have access to webcams and microphones and manage permissions.
3) Playback : Which sites can play flash content on your computer.
By always setting the "Ask for confirmation", you will be able to receive a warning every time a website or web application tries to run the plugin.
4) The Advanced menu has the right option to search for new updates which, however, are received automatically.
All this is very important from a security point of view because the Flash plugin is among the software most targeted by hackers and requires some attention, in the form of authorization to be given only to trusted sites.
To date, then, Web browsers do not have an option to delete the local memory of the flash player or to eliminate the so-called Flash cookies . As written some time ago, to manage the permissions of the flash player you had to go to the Macromedia website or use different programs such as Ccleaner.
Now instead you can delete everything from the Windows control panel and, in the next few days, and there is also the option to delete flash cookies and other plugins in the security settings of web browsers, when you clear the cache and browser history, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
Although the Flash player should be updated automatically, I refer to the links page to download the latest version of the Flash Player so as to keep the computer updated.
