The war against Flash has been stepped up a notch after Firefox blocked every version of Adobe’s plugin from running on its Firefox browser.
Facebook’s head of security has also called for Adobe to kill off Flash, because vulnerabilities are being exploited by hackers.
Firefox users now have to opt-in to view videos or use web tools which rely on Flash to play – by clicking and accepting a warning.
The warning states: “Flash is known to be vulnerable. Use with caution.”
The block is expected to remain in place until security bugs are patched, a process which is proving challenging to Adobe due to the sheer number of them.
Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said a date for killing off Flash altogether must be decided upon soon.
He said: “Nobody takes the time to rewrite their tools and upgrade to HTML5 because they expect Flash to live forever. We need a date to drive it.”
TV and movie services such as Sky TV and Netflix have already switched to Microsoft’s Silverlight instead of Flash, while others have adopted HTML5.
Apple helped stoke the move away from Flash with the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, which famously blocked the plugin.
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