ATX Support

[OKTaxGuy]

Just got off the phone with ATX support - my 2013, 2014 and 2015 ATX programs would not work. A hacked Adobe Flash update put a rootkit in my computer, and went after all financial programs (QB, etc).

I can't say enough about ATX support. In less than 20 minutes from the time he remoted into my computer, he had me up and running!  Now that's what I call service! Very professional and very competent.  Wait time and service was less than 30 minutes. That's acceptable to me.

[Abby Normal]

Where did you get a 'hacked Adobe Flash update'?

[Eric]

18 hours ago, Abby Normal said:

Where did you get a 'hacked Adobe Flash update'?

I'm going to guess that he got Flash Player from Adobe, and that it was the vector for the hack.  Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader seem to be in constant need of updating because of an endless supply of security vulnerabilities.  Same goes for Java.  

Popular browsers can render most common Flash and PDF content without the Adobe plugins installed, so I removed them from my system long ago.  There are times when I wish I had Java installed, but not badly enough to put up with updating every time I turn around.

[Lloyd Hudson]

Eric,

Are you indicating that as a rule we can do without Flash and/or Java? I see some news video sites etc that seem to say otherwise? Firefox or chrome?

 

[Abby Normal]

On 5/27/2016 at 5:37 PM, Lloyd Hudson said:

Eric,

Are you indicating that as a rule we can do without Flash and/or Java? I see some news video sites etc that seem to say otherwise? Firefox or chrome?

 

Disable/uninstall them and see how you make out. I personally can't do without them... yet, but I have FlashBlock, Ublock Origin and Disconnect add-ons in Firefox, so no flash objects run without my permission.

 

[Lloyd Hudson]

I did not know how to set up for permissions. I know my local CBS news recently would not run on livestream. Something about flash. 

[Eric]

Flash has been slowly dying for years.  Adobe is pushing developers away from it in favor of other tools that accomplish the same things with open standards, that don't contain security vulnerabilities, that won't eat your laptop's battery.  

Large companies (CBS, for example) are slow to change, however. Google knows this, and worked with Adobe in 2010 to build a sandboxed version of flash into Chrome.  It's robust enough to display most flash content like streaming video, and doesn't require that Adobe Flash is actually installed.  Even when Adobe Flash is installed, I don't believe it's used by Chrome unless you force it.  With all of the recent Flash vulnerabilities that were actively exploited, the information that Adobe released about the issues always mentioned IE an Firefox by name, but not Chrome.

So even if you don't want to use Chrome, my suggestion would be to uninstall Flash and continue using your favorite browser.  For occasionally viewing content that requires Flash, use Chrome.

There's a gotcha though.  Flash really is on its last legs.  Google has helped people view Flash content in the most secure way possible for the past 6 years while developers transition away from Flash at a glacial pace, but they've said recently that they're going to start phasing it out.  Apparently, Chrome will start blocking all flash content except for on the top 10 websites that require it, and allow people to manually whitelist additional sites.  Eventually, all sites will have flash blocked by default, but I assume they'll make it fairly easy to unblock for a particular site or your current session.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11679394/chrome-to-block-flash-later-2016

EDIT: As for PDF content, I believe Firefox, Chrome, and IE all now are able to render most PDF files in-browser without a plugin.