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Will someone finally explain to me why Adobe is the ONLY company that puts out "updates" on almost a weekly basis (for their Flash Player) and why the installer acts like it wants to take over the whole computer when it's doing its thing. Compare what Adobe puts you through with any other software that I install or update on the Mac and it's a joke, a bad joke. The incessant updates, for "security", would be enough to turn me off to Flash even if it were the best software out there. Why is it that Adobe Flash has all these security risks anyway?

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It requires updates all the time because it is so complex and has so many access points to your system that it can become insecure pretty fast.  Also it is an online content distribution format so it updates as often or more often than the internet/HTML/Media.

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I don't think it is an Operating System issue, and I don't know how you have avoided this annoyance. Laurence, I doubt that you are letting Adobe update automatically without your warning --- I set the Preferences every time (which of course the Adobe Updater forgets) to WARN me that there is an update available. Doing a Google search on "why does Adobe have to issue so many updates" yielded a massive number of people complaining about the same thing (and on both Windows and Mac). There are some "reasonable" explanations from some of the experts (one article quoted below) and lots of speculation about Adobe in general by disgruntled users. The article is from Graham Cluley of SOPHOS security company and refers to February (though I have had at least 3 alerts since February).

 

 

by Graham Cluley on February 27, 2013
FILED UNDER: Adobe, Featured, Malware, Vulnerability
 
How many times has Adobe Flash had to be updated on your computer with a new security patch?
 
Probably more times than you can count, right?
 
Well, let me make the question easier. How many times has Adobe Flash had to be updated on your computer this month?
 
The (perhaps surprising) answer is three. And let's not forget that February is the shortest month of the year.
 
Adobe has published a security bulletin telling users that they need to patch their Flash installations once again (the security updates issued previously on February 7th and February 12th aren't sufficient) to protect themselves against "targeted attacks" that are being "exploited in the wild".
 
Once again, the vulnerability isn't fussed about what operating system you run on your computer - so Windows, OS X and Linux users are all potentially in the firing line.
 
Here is the executive summary from Adobe:
 
Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.168 and earlier versions for Windows, Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.167 and earlier versions for Macintosh, and Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.270 and earlier versions for Linux. These updates address vulnerabilities that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.
 
Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0643 and CVE-2013-0648 are being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking a link which directs to a website serving malicious Flash (SWF) content. The exploit for CVE-2013-0643 and CVE-2013-0648 is designed to target the Firefox browser.
 
More information, and a series of links to downloads (if your installation does not grab the update automatically), is available in Adobe Security Bulletin APSB-1308.
 
If you run Chrome or Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8, then you should be automagically running the latest version of Adobe Flash. Similarly, if you have told Adobe Flash to automatically keep itself up-to-date you should be updated shortly.
 
At the time of writing, the latest version of Adobe Flash Player is 11.6.602.171 (on Linux it is 11.2.202.273). But bear in mind that February isn't quite over yet...
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No I definitely don't do automatic updates.  Maybe I just haven't noticed how often they've occurred but it just doesn't seem like Windows 7 has had all that many.  But considering they don't ever add features and the updates are nothing but patches for vulnerabilities and flaws written into the code, it certainly does look like a product that is perpetually unable to get it right.

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Will someone finally explain to me why Adobe is the ONLY company that puts out "updates" on almost a weekly basis (for their Flash Player) and why the installer acts like it wants to take over the whole computer when it's doing its thing. Compare what Adobe puts you through with any other software that I install or update on the Mac and it's a joke, a bad joke. The incessant updates, for "security", would be enough to turn me off to Flash even if it were the best software out there. Why is it that Adobe Flash has all these security risks anyway?

delete adobe updater and do it manually.

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