Question

When I visit a site I built some time ago in IE, I get the message bar at the bottom of the browser pop up saying that the site wants to run Flash.

This is fine, except for the fact that there is no flash in the website whatsoever.

What could cause this? How could Flash now be in the site? Is this a security issue?

Answer 1

After looking at the page, it looks like it’s triggered by Google Analytics attempting to instantiate FlashPlayer to check if it’s installed and what version it is. Doing that is enough to cause IE to think it should inform you that the page is trying to use Flash.

Update

Sent it through the script debugger in Developer Tools, and sure enough, the moment the content of ga.js is executed, the message pops up.

For anyone interested, specifically, it’s likely to be this bit of “beautified” code (can’t tell for sure, because Developer Tools can’t figure out the minified script):

if (!(b = Zc)) {
   var c, d, e;
   d = "ShockwaveFlash";
   if ((b = (b = U[va]) ? b.plugins : g) && 0 < b[u]) 
     for (c = 0; c < b[u] && !e; c++) 
        d = b[c], -1 < d[q][p]("Shockwave Flash") && (e = d.description[w]("Shockwave Flash ")[1]);
else {
   d = d + "." + d;
   try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d + ".7"), e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (f) {}
   if (!e) try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d + ".6"), 
      e = "WIN 6,0,21,0", 
      c.AllowScriptAccess = "always", 
      e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (l) {}
   if (!e) try {
      c = new ActiveXObject(d), e = c.GetVariable("$version")
   } catch (o) {}
   e && (e = e[w](" ")[1][w](","), e = e[0] + "." + e[1] + " r" + e[2])
}
b = e ? e : "-"

… which amounts to a pretty standard FlashPlayer version detection.