Adobe asks users to uninstall Flash Player from their systems by the end of the year, as well as the software planned to stop being supported (End-Of-Life or EOL), on December 31, 2020.
The announcement was added to a new EOL Flash Player support page released by Adobe earlier this month, six months before EOL.
Adobe says that once Flash reaches its EOL date, the company doesn't just plan to stop providing updates, it also plans to remove and all Flash Player download links from its website.
This will prevent users from reinstalling the software and continuing to use an unsupported version.
In addition, Adobe stated that “the content that uses Flash will be blocked from Adobe Flash Player after EOL,” suggesting that the company has added or plans to add a “time bomb” to the Flash Player code to prevent its use starting next year.
The reason for these moves is because Flash Player has always been (and is) the best target for hackers and malicious developers software. Once Flash Player reaches EOL at the end of the year, Adobe does not plan to release new security updates, leaving Flash users exposed to new vulnerabilities and attacks.
Adobe announced Flash EOL in July 2017 along with all major browser makers, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla, but also Facebook, which at the time relied heavily on Flash for platform of its online games.
From the announcement of EOL onwards, Facebook asked game developers to change technology, urging them to try HTML5 and JavaScript. Browser companies have disabled Flash in their respective programs.
Browser makers have planned to remove all Flash-supporting code from their browser them shortly before or after EOL, in late 2020, and early 2021.
Currently, according with the research website technology Ιστού W3Techs, μόνο το 2,6% των σημερινών ιστότοπων χρησιμοποιούν το Flash, ένας αριθμός που έχει πέσει πάρα πολύ από το 2011 που ήταν στο 28,5%.