Firefox Flash patch nudge working, but...

Mozilla released some brief statistics to track the success of its new program, which serves up a visual warning to Firefox users if their version of the ever-present Adobe Flash Player plug-in is out of date. The program started last week with the releases of Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14.

Here's a chart tracking the traffic and click-through rates on the Flash security warning page:

From Mozilla's Ken Kovash:

Beyond the total impact of 10,000,000 clicks, the most impressive pattern that stands out is the click through rate.  While the Firefox whatsnew page generally sees a click through rate below 5%, the flash update link alone has generated a click-through rate north of 30%.  Phenomenal!

The 30% click-through number might be something to celebrate but it means that a whopping two-thirds of all Firefox users may still be running a version of Flash Player that's vulnerable to malware attacks.

Adobe's software -- especially Flash Player and Reader/Acrobat -- have become a preferred target for malware attacks because they are usually unpatched on the majority of Windows desktops.  By Adobe's count,  99% of all Internet-enabled PCs are currently running Flash.