New Breed Of Silent Spies

I was just surfing around and came across this article which I found very fascinating and which reveals in detail how many websites keep track of you whilst giving false idea of security. Google is top of them.

Almost everyone who is a regular user of internet know about cookies. People take steps to remove cookies every time they shutdown. But have you still thought what if there was a type of cookie that could:

* Stay on your computer for an unlimited amount of time
* Store 100 kb of data by default, with an unlimited max
* Couldn’t be deleted by your browser
* Send previous visit information and history, by default, without your permission?

This type of cookie exists on 98% of global computers, across all operating systems. it’s the [n]Adobe Flash Player.

The Adobe Flash Player maintains proprietary cookies called Local Shared Objects or LSO’s. LSO’s are capable of storing 100 kb’s of information for an indefinite amount of time by default. Even when you clear your browser history in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera on Windows, Linux, or OS X, LSO’s are NOT cleared from Adobe’s local repository.

In fact, all the information in those cookies will remain indefinitely until they’re removed by the issuing website, or by you via a cumbersome and ridiculous process.

There’s no easy way to tell what sites are using flash cookies to track your movements. There’s no list, and there doesn’t have to be a flash GUI or visible application for flash cookies to be present. In fact, most websites using flash for user tracking don’t create GUI’s, toolbars, or applications that you can actually see in your browser while browsing the site.

In other words you will never come across them and will have no idea about their existence inside your computer. They will keep on secretly spying your movements and information.

A simple way to remove them which is NOT advertised anywhere is thru here

If you’ve clicked the link above, then you’re looking at the Flash Player Settings Manager, and a list of all the sites currently storing information on the cookies stored on your computer even after you have cleared all cookies and cache from your system.

To delete all the Flash Cookies currently being stored on your machine:

1. Go to the Settings Manager (Website Storage Settings)
2. Go to the far-right tab
3. Click “Delete all sites”

To prevent websites from storing any more information on your computer:

1. Go to Settings Manager
2. Click the Second Tab from the left (Global Storage Settings)
3. Set the Storage Settings slider to None
4. Uncheck “Allow Third Party Flash Content to store data on your computer

(S)

Adobe, is cited as a global leader in browser technology (a 98% computer market share), has a responsibility to make Privacy Options easily accessible from within the Player application itself. It’s ridiculous and alarming that they are enabling websites to store cookies in such large sizes. Is Adobe intentionally allowing websites to abuse privacy?

Here is a link to another article discussing this Web Sites Using Flash Instead of Browser Cookies to Track Your Activity

Great thread thank you I had no idea about this
I have removed all the shizzle from my computer!

Wow. Thanks!

There was a crap-load in there.

I was certainly surprised at the amount of data stored on my computer by Flash, and the list of sites that I have apparently visited.

Thank you for this information!

THANK you, OP

Will be passing this along to others

You may also choose not to allow access to your web cam and/or mic.

It's also useful if you want to delete any info from online games which track how you are doing from your computer rather than a server based account.

-m0r

oo it wsould be nice to do this but were is the flash play at? realy i need to open this to change any setting so werfes it HIDE
never mind i understand that website accutly shows the files in my pc ty

[edit on 23-3-2010 by xxcalbier]

Thank you all for your feedback but the thing is why does Adobe help other websites to secretly monitor your internet activity? What's behind all this? Infact who is behind all this and what is this information being used for?

For the Firefox users I found this great tool which automatically removes all flash cookies as per your preference every time you shutdown. It's called Better Privacy. Hope that helps.

please consider this

Cookies can only be read by the site that issued them

Again

A cookie can only be accessed, managed, read, written by the website (domain) that issued it.

Google cannot read Adobe cookies.

Ebay cannot read Google cookies.

etc.etc.


If you want to be concerned about being tracked, it's not going to be by a cookie. There's other, more global ways to do it for. ISP's passing "IP+MAC address upon renewal" information to a centralized database comes to mind

reply to post by TXRabbit


Isn't that what is being said thru Adobe's application many websites are storing their own flash cookies in the browser which they use for their own purpose. Most of which is tracking.

If they really want your information, then why would they give you this option??

For all we know, the (delete all sites) could send them all instead!!

Ya never know. Im not going to try it before i research a bit more, but thanks for the tip.

reply to post by scubagravy


First they never provided you any option to remove these super cookies from your system directly unlike removing normal cookies which is available in browsers. To remove them one has to go to their website and that also only if he/ she knows about it. This seems like simply a sly move to save itself from any lawsuit or any charges. How many people actually know about this? How many actually visit to remove these cookies?

Normal people who are not much computer oriented form the majority in using internet. People would be clearing their normal cookies thinking their privacy is safe now.

If they didn't want our information why would they not inform us about super cookies which stay on your computer for an unlimited amount of time and couldn’t be deleted by your browser, send previous visit information and history, by default, without your permission? Imo this is serious breach of privacy.

[edit on 24-3-2010 by December_Rain]