Flash Cookies - Protect your privacy. Flash cookies (local shared objects or LSOs) can be used to track your browsing habits just like the browser cookies you're familiar with, but Flash cookies stay around even when you delete those regular browser cookies.

Adobe condemns the practice of restoring cookies after they had been deleted by a user and they provide a link on their site where a Website Storage Settings Panel is made available to you. It would be nicer if you could just click on your browser to see Flash Cookies the same as you do with regular cookies and that may happen soon since people have expressed concern.

You may want to read our referenced material (here) as well as the Abode information to fully understand the concept of these Flash Cookies before you take any action. Basically, to view and delete Flash Cookies that reside on your system:

1. Go to Adobe's link for their Website Storage Settings Panel.
2. Click the 'Website Storage Settings' tab at the far left of the Flash settings interface.
3. Click the 'Delete all sites' button, or selectively delete them by highlighting an entry and clicking 'Delete website.

On Adobe's site they explain that what you see is not an image. It is your actual personal Settings Manager, used much the same as using Control Panel on your system. Click the tabs and you'll see different panels where you can change your Adobe Flash Player settings.

Adobe says you would use the use their Website Storage Settings panel to change settings for websites you have already visited. You would use their Global Storage Settings Panel to specify the default storage settings for websites that you haven't yet visited.

Adobe explains the storage options you have there. It includes prohibiting websites from storing any information at all. With the note that if you prohibit websites from storing information, the website might or might not function as intended.

There are some legitimate uses for Flash cookies, like storing online game settings and flash animation favorites, but advertisers can also use them to track your browsing activity on the Internet as you go from site to site. Companies can create detailed profiles about you without your knowledge.
They can gather information on the Web sites you visited and from the videos you've watched. Flash cookies can also be used to restore HTML cookies that you have deleted, thus circumventing your privacy settings.

Take more control of Flash Cookies with these free programs.
FlashCookiesView lists all your LSOs with details including the associated URL, filename and creation date. A bottom pane lists the cookie's contents, which might include a unique userID for tracking. You can quickly delete the discovered files, or save their information to a text file.
BetterPrivacy an add-on for Firefox automatically determines where the LSOs exist on your hard drive, and can be set to automatically delete them when the browser starts or exits, or after a certain amount of time. By default the add-on will display a small confirmation pop-up when you close the browser before it deletes anything.

Reference Material
PC World - Flash Cookies Pose Vexing Privacy Questions.
NY Times - Code That Tracks Browsing Prompts Lawsuits.
IT World - How to murder a Flash cookie zombie.
Epicenter - You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again.
Popular Mechanics - What Are Flash Cookies.
PC World - Are Flash Cookies Devouring Your Privacy?
Practical Commerce - An Introduction to Flash Cookies.
Wikipedia - Local Shared Objects.

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Joan-Preppernau has worked in the training and certification industry for 13 years.

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