More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.More at the link. After reading about flash cookies, I installed a Firefox add-on called BetterPrivacy. It surveyed my hard disk and found 2000+ flash cookies that had been set by sites such as WaPo, The Onion, MSNBC, ESPN, the BBC, NASA, WhiteHouse.gov, Masters.com, and by lots of game sites. I tediously reviewed them (because some flash cookies can be left in place to help certain sites function better when visited) and deleted 99% of them.
Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not...
Websites can store up to 100K of information in [flash cookies], 25 times what a browser cookie can hold. Sites like Pandora.com also use Flash’s storage capability to preload portions of songs or videos to ensure smooth playback.
All modern browsers now include fine-grained controls to let users decide what cookies to accept and which to get rid of, but Flash cookies are handled differently. These are fixed through a web page on Adobe’s site, where the controls are not easily understood...
What you do is up to you, but you should read about this and think about it.
