Once upon a time I was working with a Windows user concerned about security. My first suggestion was to block Flash from running automatically in his Chrome browser.

As documented on my FlashTester.org site, Adobe’s Flash Player is a bug magnet. As of October 16th, Adobe had fixed 203 Flash bugs in 2015 which calculates out to 5 bug fixes a week. By Halloween, it is likely there will be 10 unpatched bugs in Flash. Trick or Treat.

The cost of security is always inconvenience, and it’s hard to judge how much hassle someone will put up with for added security. So we did an experiment.

I set Flash to not run automatically (Settings -> Show advanced settings -> Content Settings button -> Plugins -> radio button set to “Let me chose when to run plugin content” ) and we visited his favorite websites to judge the hassle factor.

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