The IT Nerd

I got this question from a reader today:

“Hello IT Nerd. I read your blog often and I had a question for you. I just updated my installation of Java and it opened a web page offering to remove older versions of Java. Do I need to do that?”

Thanks for reading my blog!

The page that this reader is referring to is this one. It’s a Java based uninstall tool that is designed to find older versions of Java and remove them. It appears to have popped up to users when Java released their latest update a day or two ago. Though I will admit that it may have been there for much longer and simply wasn’t presented to users when they updated. You should use it as there are plenty of exploits out there that leverage older versions of Java. In short, if you want to be secure and you have to run Java rather than remove it, you should use this tool.

There is one catch though This tool is Windows only. If you’re running anything else such as a Mac or a LINUX box, you’re forced to remove older versions manually. Not the biggest deal in the world for those who are technically skilled, but it would be nice if Oracle brought this same functionality to other platforms.

This entry was posted on June 19, 2013 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Security with tags Java, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.