Adobe Flash Cookies Raising Privacy Questions Again 103
Nearly a year after we discussed the privacy implications of Flash cookies, they are in the news again as the US government considers revising its cookie policy. Wired covers a study out of UC Berkeley exposing questionable practices used by many of the Internet's most-visited Web sites (abstract). The most questionable activity the report exposes is known as "respawning": after a user has deleted browser tracking cookies, some sites will use information in Flash cookies to recreate them. The report names two companies, Clearspring and QuantCast, whose technologies reinstate cookies for other Web sites. "Federal websites have traditionally been banned from using tracking cookies, despite being common around the web — a situation the Obama administration is proposing to change as part of an attempt to modernize government websites. But the debate shouldn't be about allowing browser cookies or not, according Ashkan Soltani, a UC Berkeley graduate student who helped lead the study. 'If users don't want to be tracked and there is a problem with tracking, then we should regulate tracking, not regulate cookies,' Soltani said."
Re:All i can say is (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Piece of cake... (Score:4, Informative)
Or on Windows, go to 'Document and Settings' (Users on Vista/7 if I am not mistaken), 'Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player'.
Remove '#SharedObjects' folder, create a file with same name on it. Remove all security rights on it. Do same with 'macromedia.com' folder.
Problem solved. To test it, go to Youtube, set your volume to a certain level. Close browser, re-open and see if Youtube maintained the volume level. It shouldn't.
Flash Website Storage Settings (Score:5, Informative)
Good browsers let the user choose (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All i can say is (Score:5, Informative)
And a way to view what you currently have..
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html [macromedia.com]
Re:Flash Website Storage Settings (Score:1, Informative)
This content requires Flash
Download the free Flash Player now!
/dev/null (Score:3, Informative)
$cd && rm -rf
Be Safe!
Dietrich T. Schmitz & Associates [dtschmitz.com]
Cloud Computing Services
Re:Piece of cake... (Score:2, Informative)
Doesn't Adobe's Flash settings widget [macromedia.com] work in Linux? It seems a bit drastic disabling Flash cookies for the whole internet when you can set preferences individually for each website you visit.
Re:All i can say is (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't this a way to permanently disable Flash cookies?
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html [macromedia.com]
Note that this isn't just documentation. If you have Flash installed, the first what looks like a screenshot is actually the Flash config panel.
Adobe could improve it by adding "Clear all cookies on exit".
Re:Yet another reason for flashblock (Score:2, Informative)
Use Flashblock and NoScript. When you allow scripts on the page, then Flashblock fires up and puts in the place holders.
Re:All i can say is (Score:4, Informative)
I just started using bp last week and here is something important. The version on the Firefox addon site is not the latest. I got 1.41 at
http://netticat.ath.cx/BetterPrivacy/BetterPrivacy.htm [netticat.ath.cx]
because it added a bit of functionality. Specifically in the way it treats DOM storage.
DOM storage is not flash cookies (LSOs), it is a separate way sites can store data on your computer I had not heard about. The old version could only disable DS, but now BP can now treat DS like LSOs so it stays on but the data gets deleted on FF shutdown. Some sites like cnn video need DS turned on.
Also I set it to delete the default LSO. That one stores a list of every flash site you visit. Even if you turn Flash local storage completely off using:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html [macromedia.com]
you will see a list of visited sites on the last tab on that control. Deleting the default cookie gets rid of that list.
Re:All i can say is (Score:4, Informative)
The version on the Firefox addon site is not the latest.
I wish the AMO folks would update BetterPrivacy to the latest version but I cannot do anything to accelerate that procedure. Thanks for your important note, I found it accidently while searching for related websites. NettiCat (author of BetterPrivacy, http://netticat.ath.cx/ [netticat.ath.cx]
Re:Piece of cake... (Score:3, Informative)
BAD solution! Some sites will break if you do this and you won't be able to watch videos.
There are many better solutions. Using an init or crond script is one to remove the directory regularly. Another is to mount ~/.macromedia to /tmp or a ramdisk which is what I do. Those cookies never even get to smell my hard drive and it's not like I'm doing anything better with the RAM.
Re:Adobe needs a new CEO. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually found one:
Bleachbit - http://bleachbit-project.appspot.com/ [appspot.com]
Open-Source and for Linux and Windows.
Still would love to find a command-line version of something like it to run on shutdown and/or from cron.