AutoPlay

You're correct in your observation that Adobe does not offer free technical support for the products that it offers free of charge.  The staff and volunteers that monitor the forums do so as a courtesy, mostly in their free time.

Most browsers allow you to set Flash Player to Click To Play.  It's ultimately up to the browser to decide when to load browser plug-ins.  Providing a barrier to having the content execute would greatly diminish the utility and usability of content that relies on Flash.  Unfortunately, that also means that content providers and advertisers can choose to create invasive content.  That isn't a technology problem, and content providers can just as easily create the exact same experiences using HTML.  In fact, at this point in 2016, it's quite possible that you're looking at HTML5-based advertising, unless you're seeing About Flash Player in the right-click context menu on the offending content.

Without getting too far afield, those invasive advertisements pay for the development and delivery of the content, which you're also enjoying free of charge.  If the economics of those techniques didn't work, I'm sure the content providers and advertisers would move on to something more productive.  That said, I personally value the efforts of the creators of most of the content I consume, and where I can pay for an ad-free experience for good content, I frequently prefer those sources.

That being said, there are numerous browser plugins that are intended to defeat advertising (at the expense of the content providers you patronize).  That problem is largely solved at this point.

Most browsers also provide features that allow you to control how browser plug-ins are invoked, which for multiple reasons, is a much better mechanism for controlling when and how Flash Player is launched.  Without knowing what browser or operating system you're using; however, I can't really give you tailored advice on how to do that.