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Question

Why is Safari asking me to allow Adobe Flash Player for unexpected sites (e.g., MacRumors, PayPal)?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
October 13, 2016
3 replies
13083 views

Lately, I've been receiving the prompt, "Do you want to trust the website '[URL of website]' to use the 'Adobe Flash Player' plug-in" prompt from Safari for sites that don't appear to require it (e.g., MacRumors, PayPal).

Whether I click "trust" or "not now" seems to make no difference in the functionality of the site.

Can anyone explain what's going on, here?

Is this a bug in Safari or Flash?

Or is my computer likely infected with some sort of malware or virus? (I ran Malwarebytes; it didn't find anything. I'm running Norton Antivirus now; unless I post otherwise, you can assume it didn't find anything, either.)

Or do sites like MacRumors and PayPal have legitimate uses for Adobe Flash Player?

Note that I am using the latest versions of Safari (10.0), macOS (10.12), and Adobe Flash Player (23.0.0.185, as verified and updated in the System Preferences Flash Player pane).

See below for screenshots. Unfortunately, I don't recall what other sites have been giving me this prompt, offhand, but they include sites as reputable as MacRumors and PayPal.

This topic has been closed for replies.

jeromiec83223024

Inspiring

For what it's worth, most of the time that you see Flash on a site like Paypal, Amazon, etc., it's related to website analytics. If you dig into the code, this kind of content tends to be small (like 1x1 or 5x5 pixels), and these techniques in general have a lot to do with the criticism aimed at Flash around memory and power consumption.

It's not uncommon on media sites -- particularly where there's a whole host of companies involved in the metrics, ad distribution and auditing ecosystem -- where there may be dozens of these kinds of trackers from multiple parties in the ecosystem on the same page. Since advertising pays for an insane amount of the content generated online for mass consumption, all of that auditing and tracking is necessary to ensure that content producers can make a living.

While HTML5 and JavaScript give developers similar (and in many instances, far more powerful capabilities) for these purposes, Flash Player is handy, particularly when you're talking about targeting older browser (e.g. IE8), which otherwise may lack the scripting capabilities used for creating meaningful insight into how people are using your website. It wasn't an explicit design goal of ours to facilitate this kind of stuff, but there are a lot of smart people in the marketing space, and it's a de-facto practice at this point.

So yeah, these kinds of SWFs are probably legitimate, but also in many instances not strictly necessary to make the site work.

Kris Hunt

Legend

I've experience this as well. In the past couple of months, it seems I get this prompt ten times a day from all sorts of websites that seem to not use Flash at all anyway. Maybe they do, but like you say, I don't see any adverse effects at all from disallowing it.

_maria_

Legend

Apple disables Flash Player by default in Safari 10. If Safari is prompting you to Trust (allow) Flash Player plug-in on a specific page it would indicate the page contains some Flash content. You're free to allow or not allow. If the page doesn't display correctly you can go to Safari > Preferences > Security and modify the plugin settings (Enable Adobe Flash Player for Safari)

Reference:

Next Steps for Legacy Plug-ins | WebKit

Safari in macOS Sierra Deactivates Flash and Other Plug-ins By Default - Mac Rumors

G

gator soup

Inspiring

maria__ (or adobe employee)

How to STOP Safari 11x from triggering the

"Do you want to trust the website '[URL of website]' to use the 'Adobe Flash Player' plug-in"

I get it 20-plus times a day on the web and it's VERY annoying.

I cannot "esc" or back out of it ... the only option is to Force Quit (unless I want to click on something in the popup).

I don't want to remove the Flash plugin or enable it globally -- I just don't want to generate a popup on every site that calls it up.

I'm running OS X 10.12.6 on MacBook Pro.

G

gator soup

Inspiring

I apologize for the miscommunication. I posted the screenshot of what I was asking for, and the path to it, Safari > Preferences > Websites > Plug-ins > Adobe Flash, in comment #8. I do see where I made a typo in comment #12.

Why would Safari display a Flash prompt if Flash plugin is completely disabled?
That's as annoying as having to Force Quit a web browser or click inside a popup to get out of it.
Seriously, is there no way to to disable Adobe Flash-related popups in Safari 11.0.2?

You will need to ask Apple. Apple controls how and when Safari prompts to load the plug-in, not Adobe.

Crikey, maria ... I read all your responses very carefully

the screenshot you posted in #12 noted I was in Safari Preferences "Reader" and your text instructions there pointed me to "System Preferences Flash Player setting"

out of frustration in my last post, i asked the Adobe Acrobat team here if there was a "way to to disable Adobe Flash-related popups in Safari 11.0.2" and you tell me I "need to ask Apple"

that didn't answer my question and it is a poor response in my opinion

i will repeat for the last time having to click in a popup or force quit a browser to get out of a popup (with no way around it) is bad programming and your team would have better luck asking Apple (or Adobe engineers) to fix it

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