Adobe Flash Cookies Raising Privacy Questions Again

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @08:10AM from the flash-in-the-pan dept.

Nearly a year after we discussed the privacy implications of Flash cookies, they are in the news again as the US government considers revising its cookie policy. Wired covers a study out of UC Berkeley exposing questionable practices used by many of the Internet's most-visited Web sites (abstract). The most questionable activity the report exposes is known as "respawning": after a user has deleted browser tracking cookies, some sites will use information in Flash cookies to recreate them. The report names two companies, Clearspring and QuantCast, whose technologies reinstate cookies for other Web sites. "Federal websites have traditionally been banned from using tracking cookies, despite being common around the web — a situation the Obama administration is proposing to change as part of an attempt to modernize government websites. But the debate shouldn't be about allowing browser cookies or not, according Ashkan Soltani, a UC Berkeley graduate student who helped lead the study. 'If users don't want to be tracked and there is a problem with tracking, then we should regulate tracking, not regulate cookies,' Soltani said."

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Re:Piece of cake... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-11 08:26 · Score: -1, Offtopic

It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake. If the way is hazy,
You gotta do the cooking by the book. You know you cant be lazy.
Never use a messy recipe, the cake will end up crazy.
If you do the cooking by the book...
Then you'll have a cake.
We gotta have it made.
You know that i love cake.
Finally, it's time to make a cake.