Can't find what you are looking for ?
Google
 



Friday, February 19, 2010

Flash and cookies - learn more about privacy

People rightly see cookies as a problem in terms of privacy and tracking their activities. If you read this article (link), you will learn about the ability of tracking cookies set by Flash, something that is used by a large number of sites.
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.
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.”

No comments: