FedEx paying customers to re-install Flash
FedEx is running a new promotion offering customers $5 off a purchase if they install Adobe Flash and permanently re-enable it.
From FedEx’s angle, Flash is used to deliver cloud printing services. That’s the sign of an ancient web app, especially when you consider Google Chrome officially began blocking Flash content in December 2016 in favor of HTML5. Apple’s Safari did the same thing earlier in the year. Last summer, Mozilla Firefox began blocking Flash content as well. Facebook blocked it before then and, to top it all off, Adobe itself announced the impending death of Flash in 2015.
Flash introduces stability, performance and security issues to every browser it touches, hence the movement to have Flash removed from the internet. In 2015, the year before the technology started to be blacklisted in major browsers, Flash accounted for four out of five widely used zero day vulnerabilities.
The years-long campaign to exterminate the technology is moving along quickly except for slow movers like FedEx, who didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story.
In the meantime, if you absolutely have to use FedEx’s printing page, try this: Instead of permanently turning on Flash, turn it on for their site only by clicking the (i) in the URL bar. When you’re done, turn it right back off.
