Firefox kills Flash and blocks ‘supercookies’

In the latest version of Firefox, the notoriously vulnerable Internet relic known Flash is finally history. — dpa

Mozilla, always trying to make its browser safer and simpler to use than those of its rivals at Google and Microsoft, has once again been tuning the settings of Firefox.

This time, instead of adding features, Mozilla has been killing them off.

That’s because in the latest version of Firefox, Flash is finally history. Until now, we were still able to manually activate the multimedia plug-in for Adobe’s platform, but Firefox 85 has now put an end to that.

Flash developer Adobe had already discontinued the distribution and updates of Flash Player at the end of 2020.

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge also no longer support this notoriously vulnerable platform, as of January 2021.

Flash has been attracting negative attention due to a large number of security flaws and its initial lack of updates to close the vulnerabilities.

Flash has been largely replaced by the open web standard HTML5.

Another innovation in Firefox 85 is that the browser can now block so-called supercookies. These kinds of cookies track users on their way across various websites, but cannot usually be deleted with a simple mouse click in your browser settings.

Mozilla has also optimised the favourites section and the browser now finally remembers where exactly you saved your last bookmarks and then brings you back to the same place, such as the toolbar or a certain folder, when you next want to save a bookmark. – dpa