Adobe Flash Player is a bear trap on your computer, just waiting for you to stumble onto the wrong website to spring and install malware onto your computer. Recently a group of thieves bought advertising on Yahoo’s network under false pretenses and used code embedded in their ads to take advantage of unpatched Flash Player software on the computers of people who were doing nothing more than reading the news or checking their email. Unfortunately, Flash is used heavily on almost every site on the World Wide Web, so it’s not practical for most people to go without it.

I recommend security plugins like NoScript & AdBlock on every browser to keep vulnerabilities like this at a minimum. AdBlock is very user friendly, but most Internet users won’t be comfortable with NoScript, even though it’s more effective. The more powerful the security software, the less friendly it usually is. That’s just the nature of the industry.

If you aren’t comfortable using security plugins like NoScript & AdBlock–or even if you are–it’s vital to keep Flash Player up to date to protect against the new security flaws that are discovered almost every month.

Go here to check what version of Flash Player you have installed: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

If you don’t have the latest version, go here to download and install it: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Make sure that you *UNCHECK* all optional offers before clicking on the Install Now button!