Abuse of Adobe Flash

Question

Lots of websites in the wild seem to abuse their visitors by automatically starting flash based advertisements / trailers and the like. What are the defenses modern browsers offer, for example,

1. Disallow automatic playing for a specific URL / site/ domain
2. Disallow speaker use [flash does not allow this to be configured and I'm especially annoyed with speaker abuse]?

Of course, removing flash altogether is not an option :)

Ideas?

Update: A clarification: I visit the sites in question because they've useful content... but I don't care for them hogging my speaker... Bandwidth sacrifice I can live with... IE does have a "Play sounds on web pages" option but it's not per page/site. I do need flash per se [for watching podcasts etc.].

Answer 1

I don't think any current browsers offer any features like this - what happens inside a plugin is basically beyond the browser's concern. I think that currently, what ultimately curbs this behavior is social - I've only seen an ad banner with auto-playing audio once, and a day or two later on the same site there was a post from the admin apologizing and explaining that he had changed banner providers.

With that said, a browser-wide "mute plugins" feature would be a good idea; I just don't think there is one currently. I also wish Flash would put a "mute" option in the context menu, but again it's not currently so.

Answer 2

There are several means:

• Stop Autoplay, a Firefox add-on that does the obvious;
• Flashblock, similar deal;
• FlashMute, to control Flash audio (I find sites that autoplay Flash audio to be the most irritating and almost always get closed immediately); and
• Uninstall Flash. My laptop doesn't have it installed and you'll be surprised how much you don't miss it.

Answer 3

Usually I start right away with using a Hosts file to block a lot of unwanted sites.

As for the browser implementation: Internet Explorer offers the ability to block things by configuring the zones and adding sites to them. (Which is actually the same as using a hosts file)

Current browsers also help you to prevent malicious websites using lists they periodically download from the internet, which use warnings so you don't accidentally visit them.

Besides these things there are a lot of addons available for blocking images, javascript, flash and more... You can find some of them in the other answers.

Answer 4

First with IE don't let flash get installed. To stop the prompts to install it, add this to the registry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}]
"Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400

Then for the odd site that you have to have flash for, use an alternative browser such as Opera or Chrome, for which let flash be installed.