Adobe Flash Player Has Reached Its End-of-Life – Uninstall It Now If Haven’t Done Already

Adobe Flash Player, after all the security chaos, has finally reached its end-of-life officially. Adobe has asked all users to stop using this software. Also, they have warned everyone not to go to third-parties to download this tool as it will pose a security risk.

No More Updates to Adobe Flash Player After End-of-Life

Adobe has shared a detailed advisory regarding its product Flash Player. Specifically, Adobe has explicitly announced the official end-of-life of Flash Player on December 31, 2020.

As stated, Flash Player will receive no security updates or bug fixes in 2021. Also, from January 12, 2021, the tech giant will block all content running Flash Player to encourage the users to avoid its use.

Adobe first announced killing Flash Player in 2017 after back-to-back security risks arising from it. Since then, a gradual phase-out of the product began that included browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to block Flash.

And now, after three years, Adobe has finally killed Flash Player considering that the alternate technologies have matured. As Adobe stated,

Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content. Also, major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Flash Player).
By providing more than three years’ advance notice, Adobe believes that there has been sufficient time for developers, designers, businesses, and other parties to migrate Flash content to new standards.  The EOL timing was in coordination with some of the major browser vendors.

Uninstall Flash Player Now

While Adobe will be blocking Flash, it has also asked the users to manually uninstall it from their systems. It’s because it will continue to run on the systems where installed.

Since Adobe will not release any updates or fixes to it, it’ll likely become a security threat for the users if it exists on their systems.

Adobe will also show periodic reminders to them to uninstall the software.

Moreover, Adobe will also remove the download pages for the tool from its website. Nonetheless, since it may exist on third-parties, Adobe warns users not to download Flash Player from them.

For Windows users, Microsoft has also issued an update that will remove Flash Player from the device.