[OSX-Users] Re: Important Flash Player update

[Philip Boulain]

On 07/06/2011 09:57, Julian Field wrote:
> There has been yet another update to the Adobe Flash Player that many 
> websites use (all those stupid animated adverts mostly).

On that basis, there is a *lot* to be said for blocking Flash content 
unless you explicitly click to see/whitelist it (e.g. YouTube), like 
reducing the chances you'll ever even let a malicious animation load, 
and stopping badly-written banner ads from turning all your battery life 
into heat.

For Firefox, there's FlashBlock, or NoScript performs a superset of that 
if you want to squash JavaScript and other plugins by default as well:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

For Safari, there appears to be ClickToFlash, which also special-cases 
YouTube and some other video sites to use QuickTime instead(!):

https://extensions.apple.com/  (It's all JavaScript-y, so you'll have to 
search-in-page)
http://clicktoflash.com/  (Its own website, but uses a pkg installer and 
manual "uninstall" rather than the Safari extensions UI)

I haven't used it extensively but a quick test on Hackintosh VM seemed 
to work and it appears you can turn off the YouTube QuickTime-ifying if 
the interface replacement is unwelcome or YT changes break it.

For Opera, the capability is built in since version 10.5 or so, and is 
buried under Menu -> Settings -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> 
"Enable plug-ins only on demand", because all their UI designers are 
drunk. This does at least also catch _everything_, including Java 
Applets, because chances are that unless you're marking CM143 coursework 
Java is just sitting around as another angle of attack for malware.

-- 
| Philip Boulain   PhD student | ,-.    |   We are not  here to give   |
| IAM, ECS, Uni of Southampton |   /    | users what they want. We are |
| http://zepler.net/~lionsphil | -' `-' | here to spread freedom. -RMS |
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