Do I really still need Flash? No. No you don’t.

Want to do one single, simple thing to drastically improve your security during advent? Just turn off Flash. Turning off Flash deprives malware writers of one of their favorite toys and stops con artists preying on your hair trigger for Flash security updates by using them as camouflage for malware.

By happy coincidence it also deprives marketeers and advertisers of one of their most annoying toys (anyone remember splash screens?), stops them from tracking you across multiple browsers with Flash cookies and makes you far harder to fingerprint online too.

And as if those weren’t reasons enough, your battery will probably send you a Christmas card too because, as one wag put it, Flash is just the internet’s way of reminding you that your laptop has a fan. It might seem difficult at first but remember that iPhone and iPad users have been Flash-free from the get-go and they seem more than a little smug happy with their lot.

If you still can’t see the writing on the wall consider that Adobe, the maker of Flash, is airbrushing the name out of existence and that even its newly monikered Adobe Animate software thinks you should seriously consider HTML5 as an alternative.

So go on, annoy some hackers and give your laptop fan the day off.