We wanted to send out a message regarding Adobe Flash. As of the end of 2020 - Adobe Flash is no longer supported, even by Adobe who created it. Below is the information page on Flash from Adobe about this cahnge:
https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html
The browser developers had already been deprecating Flash for several years due to security issues, but once Adobe made that announcement, the browser developers all announced they would block support for it once Adobe ended support.
See the following for more information on this from the various browser developers:
Flash has been an enormous security problem over the years - with severe vulnerabilities (which could cause a computer to be compromised just by visiting a page with malicious Flash content) for almost as long as it's been around. The lack of support for Flash on mobile devices (Android & iPhones/iPads), along with the advent of HTML5 (which allows similar capabilities to Flash without plugins or the same security issue) was the beginning of the end for Flash.
Between the alternatives, the security issues, and the lack of mobile support, it was just a matter of time before Adobe and the browser developers pulled the plug on it. Now that it isn't even getting patched for known security issues - it is an even greater risk to any computer where it is used.
We have already started to uninstall Flash from college owned computers. If you have Flash installed on your personal computers - we strongly recommend uninstalling it. Here's some instructions on doing so from Adobe: