Overview

A recent study at UC Berkeley, a government inquiry, and several recent news articles have combined to highlight a new privacy concern, as well as some underhanded tricks that web tracking companies are using to monitor internet user activity. Using Adobe’s Flash Player, web sites now have the ability to track users using a concept similar to browser cookies – and up to now, this has been done silently, without notification, and in some cases even after individual users have “opted out” of cookie tracking.

In fact, the study showed that more than 50% of the top 100 internet sites used Flash data to “re-spawn” cookies that had been intentionally cleared, deleted, or blocked by users.

Here’s an experiment you can try. Take a look at the following folder in your system, to see what sites are using Flash data to maintain tracking information on your system:

In Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\{yourname}\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects

In Windows Vista:

C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects

In Mac OS/X:

~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/

In either case, look in the subfolder with a random name, and you’ll be amazed at what you find.

The idea of using Flash Player to store tracking information isn’t new, but it has spawned a hidden system for tracking user activity in a way that is neither self-evident, nor easily managed. Read on for some background and suggestions in how to deal with this situation.

If you want to skip the gory details and just know how to prevent this, skip to the section near the end, titled “Adobe’s Flash Player Settings Application.”

Read on…

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