Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player is a deprecated plugin that allows interactive web animations to be played back within a browser. It gained widespread use in the early 2000s and many sites used it for streaming audiovisual content, movies, and playing games. However, it was also criticized for its security issues.

History
Flash Player was previously developed by Macromedia, which Adobe had acquired in December 2005. At that time, the player was at version 8, roughly in parity with the Flash Professional authoring application. However, it was then rapidly updated over the following years through dozens of software updates to patch various security flaws. Malicious websites and online ads took advantage of this by attempting to trick users into downloading fake Flash updaters to install software viruses, unwanted adware, malware, and spyware that can steal their data.

Deprecation
In April 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs criticized the Flash platform and stated that the company would not allow it to run on its iOS devices. Developers of third-party web browsers began to blacklist the Flash plugin by default due to security issues. In July 2017, Adobe announced that it would phase out support for Flash by the end of 2020.