A while back I wrote an article called Flash Cookies: The Silent Privacy Killer, which was one of the first main stream articles to expose Adobe Flash LSO objects as a privacy threat, much like browser Cookies are.
The article got a lot of attention from Slashdot and many independent privacy blogging sources and it looks like some of it has paid off!
Today I noticed in my latest Alpha Build of Google Chrome (Dev build 5.0.335.1) that the Privacy Settings section now has a direct link to Adobe’s hard-to-find privacy settings, which allows you to clear your LSO’s or Adobe Cookies.
To me this is the first step into forcing Adobe to provide an API so that browsers can clear Flash cookies and other Flash cache information directly from the browser.
I commend the Google Developers for recognizing the risk of Flash cookies and helping to bring their existence out into the open! Also, still no links or functionality from Internet Explorer, or FireFox. Hopefully they’ll follow the Chromium Project’s lead!
Apparently the link is no longer there, i just looked in mine for it, and it looks like theyve done away with it.
Firefox has a good addon called better privacy that automatically deletes flash cookies everytime u exit the browser. good to know chrome finally got something to delete it as well
Yeah that's one great thing about FF – Lots of plugins.
Still though, that's part of the reason I find Chrome to be a thing of beauty. Simplicity. I don't have any plugins installed, and I hope I never do.
This isn't wholly true. I used Chrome exclusively for the last week, and having Better Privacy LSO remover on FF, I opened it up just to shut it and see if there were any LSO's that weren't being removed by Chrome, and lo and behold, it found 18!
@BigBrotherChrome:
If you use Chrome with a packet sniffer, you'll see they're fairly honest about what they're sending back and forth.
Chrome is an open source browser, so the window for Scandal is limited.
I was more suspicious of Google than I was of Adobe before I became aware of this (Flash Cookies). I am still concerned about Google, and what using its applications and services means to privacy. I would love to use Chrome, but have yet to put it on my system, because I have not seen anything that has given me confidence that Google is not somehow tracking, storing, and or sharing WWW activity. Does anyone have any information regarding Google Chrome and privacy, from someone other than Google of course. Any links to independent WWW sites that offer information regarding privacy protection and Google would be welcome, please post.
A lot of spyware protection apps don't touch Flash. One app I like is CCleaner, . I inadvertently walked into:
Visited a site which wouldn't send Flash content until I accepted the "Flash cookie(s)." I watched the video, then reset the browser Flash settings to storage = none. Looked clean.
Ran Ccleaner, and found a history of Flash site preferences, which Ccleaner deleted.