Google to Ban Flash Based Advertising - Bye Flash

Google had also joined the path of Apple, Facebook, and Youtube to kill the "Adobe Flash Player" by announcing that the company is banning Flash banner support from its Adwords Advertising platform.

"To enhance the browsing experience for more people on more devices, the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing are now going 100% HTML5" Google says.

It's been two decades since Adobe Flash has ruled the Web Space Animation Arena, which was the de facto standard for playing the online videos.

Flash Player had been famous for Zero-day exploits which are a potential threat to online users.

Even Adobe tried to maintain equilibrium by releasing a countless number of patches frequently (that got hiked), for instant reported vulnerabilities, but this had annoyed both customers and companies.

The endless troubleshooting of the Flash Player plugins never resolved the vulnerabilities.

To put a full stop on this issue... many major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Youtube, Google Chrome, Firefox had been magnetized towards the new substitutor - HTML 5.

• Facebook's Security Chief publicly called for Adobe to announce a 'kill-date for Flash.'
• Google Chrome has also begun blocking auto-playing Flash ads by default.
• In January this year, YouTube moved away from Flash for delivering videos.
• Firefox also blocked the Flash plugin entirely.

By ending up Flash, all the above companies found a silver bullet to the security issues that have plagued Adobe Flash for years, as well as eliminated a third party dependency.

Steve Jobs was right about the end of Flash as he quoted as saying in his letter:

“New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

HTML 5 has gained a Word of Mouth Popularity by many developers and also have many advantages like to play the video smoothly, in fact, in a better way.

So, Google also officially declared that it would not support Flash ads in Doubleclick Digital Marketing from July 30, 2016.

Moreover, from January 2, 2017, the company will discontinue the support for Google Display Network as a part of complete Flash Wipe Out.

However, as a Result of this awful reputation, Flash Player would be rebranded as “Animate CC” with some additional features like the direct conversion of Flash Files to HTML5 Canvas files.

Adobe Animate CC – mostly looks like an update to the Flash Professional software – supports Adobe Flash (SWF) and AIR formats 'as first-class citizens,' along with other animation and video formats, including HTML5 canvas, 4K and WebGL output.

France won't Ban TOR & Free Wi-Fi

Despite the French Ministry of Interior's demands, France will not ban the TOR anonymity network or Free public Wi-Fi as a way to help the law enforcement fight terrorism.

French Prime Minister Manual Valls has gone on record saying that a ban on Free public Wi-Fi is "not a course of action envisaged," and he is not in favor of banning the TOR anonymity network, either.

Following the deadly terror attacks on Paris last month, an internal document obtained by Le Monde indicated that French government wanted to block communications of TOR as well as ban the use of Free Public Wi-Fi during states of emergency in an effort to fight terrorism more efficiently.

TOR and Free Wi-Fi Safe in France, PM Says 

"A ban of [free public] Wi-Fi is not a course of action envisaged [and never has been]," Valls said (translated) on Wednesday. 

Neither he is in favor of banning the TOR network, which encrypts and re-routes user traffic through a network of volunteer-operated servers, masking the real identities of users.

"Internet is a Freedom, is an extraordinary means of communication between people, it is a benefit to the economy," Valls added. "It's also a means for terrorists to communicate and spread their totalitarian ideology."

Therefore, he said the police must take some measures to improve their fight against terrorism in light of recent Paris attacks, but whatever measures they take to combat terrorism "must be effective."

The whole world response to recent Paris attacks involves lawmakers in the United States and Europe calling for new laws on technology, forcing the tech companies to put "backdoors" in their products and hand over encryption keys to the government on court orders.

France wants to BAN TOR & Free Wi-Fi Services

Now this was to be done, Sooner or Later – The Government.

In the wake of the recent deadly Paris terror attacks, the French government is considering new laws that would Ban access to Free Wi-Fi and the Tor anonymity network, according to a recent report by French newspaper Le Monde.

The report cites an internal document from the Ministry of Interior by French Department of Civil Liberties and Legal Affairs (DLPAJ) that lists two proposed bills – one around the State of Emergency and the other on combating counter-terrorism.

Last month's Paris attacks started blame games, calling Edward Snowden and end-to-end encrypted services responsible for the ISIS-sponsored massacre.

Now, the government has started renewing their assault on encryption and reviving their efforts to force tech companies to hand over encryption keys, and the document obtained by Le Monde hints the same.

Proposed Pieces of Legislation

State of Emergency Proposal: In this law, the French government is considering to Forbid the use of Free and Shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency. Also, if the owners of public Wi-Fi networks did not disconnect, they could face criminal penalties.

According to the police, the reason behind restricting access to free or shared Wi-Fi is that it is apparently difficult to track suspects who use public Wi-Fi networks to communicate, so the law would shut down public Wi-Fi hotspots during a state of emergency.

The state of emergency increases the powers of the police in the country. During the state of emergency, French police may search residences without a warrant, tighten border controls, and even ban public protests.

Proposal for Combating Counter-Terrorism: This legislation proposal says the government is banning or blocking communications of the Tor network as well as requiring service providers to hand over encryption keys to police – not just during a state of emergency.

Indeed, in this section of the document, the Department of Civil Liberties and Legal Affairs questioned whether such proposed pieces of legislation might violate the French Constitution.

The Onion Router, or TOR, is an anonymising network maintained by volunteers, which routes users’ data requests globally, making it very hard (but not impossible) to discover the actual user behind the computer screen.

Tor is an easy tool to hide your real identity on the Internet and is used not only by journalists, whistleblowers, and privacy concerned people, but also by terrorists, pedophiles, and cyber criminals.

Both pieces of legislation, according to Le Monde, could appear as soon as January 2016.

If block, France would be the first European country to block TOR. Though there is no easy way to block the anonymising network, China and Iran have both made successful attempts to block TOR.