Are Your Bits Flipped? by Joe Kissell

Author:Joe Kissell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TidBITS
Published: 2016-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

Joe on Java

I want to reiterate two main points to be sure they’re crystal clear. On the one hand, neither the Java programming language nor the Java Runtime will hurt you or your computer. Merely having the Java Runtime installed does not introduce any security risks. In fact, even running stand-alone Java applications is safe, as long as they come from well-known sources. Or, to put it differently, it’s just as safe to run a stand-alone Java app as it is to run any other app (because, after all, any app could in theory be compromised).

On the other hand, having Java enabled in your browser is, at this point, wildly dangerous. I strongly suggest turning it off (which, of course, is only necessary or even possible if you’ve manually installed the Java Runtime). To do this in Safari, go to Safari > Preferences > Security and click the Plug-in Settings button, uncheck Java, and click Done. In Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons > Plugins, and choose Never Activate from the pop-up menu next to the Java Applet Plug-in. (Google Chrome no longer supports Java applets at all.)

Now, in case you’re wondering if you should uninstall the Java Runtime altogether, I’ll lay it out for you. If you’re running Lion or later, you’ll have the Java Runtime on your Mac only if you tried to run a Java app and then followed the prompts to download and install the JRE (in which case, if you still want to run that app, you still need Java Runtime) or you manually downloaded it from Oracle yourself (again, presumably because you needed it). Portions of Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop, rely on Java. So do OpenOffice, a few games, and a handful of productivity apps. If you need an app that relies on Java, you must hang onto the Java Runtime, but turn it off in all your Web browsers.

Note: CrashPlan, a popular backup app, is also written in Java, but CrashPlan includes its own, built-in JRE, which is not available outside the CrashPlan app and is therefore safe to use. Developer Code42 has updated the enterprise version of its app to no longer rely on Java. Presumably the same will eventually happen with the consumer version.

If you don’t need Java but still have it installed, you can uninstall it. To do so on a Mac, follow these instructions; for Windows, see this page. If you don’t see the options described on those pages, you don’t have Java installed.

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