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Freaky Flash 6 Fishy Features

Posted by chrisd on from the what-are-they-thinking dept.

donpardo writes "I upgraded to Flash 6 last week (to patch a security hole). When I right clicked on a Flash ad at abcnews.com, and pulled down to Settings I got a tabbed dialogue box asking if I wanted to give them access to my cam and microphone. Clicking through on the tabs revealed that the microphone and the camera had already been detected and that the microphone was active. I doubt the camera or the microphone were sending information out but this still seems invasive. Here are Macromedia's statements about the mic and the camera. In addition there is a setting to ask how much information the site can store on your computer. The default value is 100K. According to the information statement "Data can be anything from your user name to your current score in an interactive game to a list of stocks in your portfolio ... The data is not public, but the privacy of this data depends on the policies of the web site where the movie is hosted."" I thought the first sentence of this submission was telling ...

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Internet Awareness Anyone? by Scotch+Game · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay, security's important, but come on people. The settings are configurable, the policy is easy to understand and what we're talking about in terms of the data being stored is essentially what amounts to Cookies for Flash. The camera and mic stuff can be turned off. If you don't like Flash this won't make you love it and if you love Flash this won't make you hate it. So people are posting about WHAT exactly?

    "I have to turn my camera off for Flash! Invasion of privacy! Invasion of privacy! Cookies are evil! The sun is disappearing, the dragons are coming! The dragons are coming!

  2. Re:What business does a player by GoRK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MOTHER OF GOD that is so SINISTER of them. Surely, the bit is there to serve SATAN!

    I mean, how could it serve a legitimate purpose if you were using your webcam for, say, security purposes - to watch your empty office or house while you were away, or you just didn't want the LED to blink when it took a picture for say - your robot vision app? Won't someone PLEASE get these hardware engineers to stop including useful features in their devices?

    The intel webcams have always had this nice little shutter on the front that you can close. A very nice feature.