Slashdot Mirror
Freaky Flash 6 Fishy Features
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 ...
Using IO and local storage; looks like they want to create a "web within the web" - except here they control the client and all the content. No more pesky 'open standards'. And, of course, if you want to create content, you'll have to pay the man...
I'm getting sick of this.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
... to boycott Flash.
-jfedor