More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plugin 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.
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.
What’s even sneakier?
Several services even use the surreptitious data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, which is called ‘re-spawning’ in homage to video games where zombies come back to life even after being “killed,” the report found. So even if a user gets rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the “backup.”
Read more on Epicenter.
Is there any way to delete the Flash cookies?
The other day I read news about Google selling your data to other companies, and now Adobe. Looks like Yahoo must be the only company that actually respects an individual’s privacy.
There is a law against spamming, we should have similar law against spying – No company should store any information on our computers without our knowledge.
Any votes?
Firefox has an add-on, Better Privacy, that you might want to check out.
ah, Will check it out. Thanks!