Upon reading this I found myself wondering how in the world this was supposed to mean a darn thing to the casual user? Seriously, while I would realize if my Flash installation suddenly seemed to disappear when I entered a web site asking me to install the plugin again, most people will not think twice about it. I may not blame Adobe as clearly, they did not cause this problem, the fact remains that this security warning sounds more like a smug “I told you so’ rather than shot at providing a real solution.
Besides that, let me take a moment to poke holes in the security precautions that Adobe is stating as a means of prevention.
- The security certificate – if you are not in IT, this means NOTHING to you and chances are you are allowing everything that comes in as if it was coming from a reliable source.
- The validation website – in our quest to make the use of a computer as brainless as possible, it seems that the idea of allowing website the ability to install Flash for you might not have been such a hot idea. Instead, I would say that going to back to a time where you tell them to goto their preferred search engine and search for it instead might be the only sure fire way of dealing with this. And yes, I realize just how impossible and asinine this must sound.
Fine, I will admit it – there really is no solution short of force fed education on commonsense computer practices. This may sound extreme, but when we live in a world where even Flash installers are being faked, drastic measures are clearly needed. Any suggestions? Hit the comments.