The only thing I can think of offhand that I really USE a Flash player for is YouTube, and if you have Flashblock and want to play a YouTube clip, all you have to do is click on the little "f" icon that appears in the middle of the video box, so it seems a small hassle for the extra protection you get. I've only tried it with Firefox, as this is an FF add-on, but no complaints so far. It's a fast simple (free) download - and it saves you from being annoyed by all those animated adverts, which seem to be Flash's main purpose in life. Don't know what the story with IE is, nor if Safari (being a Mac application) is vulnerable.
SlashDot sez [excerpt]: Flash Vulnerabilities Affect Thousands of Sites http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/2240257 The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular Web development tools for generating SWF produce files containing the recently disclosed vulnerabilities ... which leave thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors. A web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites... Updates in the Adobe software that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably wouldn't quell the threat completely. No patch in sight from Adobe, that's the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions."
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