FTC Is In Talks With Adobe About the 'Flash Problem'

jamie links to news that the FTC is talking with Adobe about persistent Flash cookies. "Flash isn't actually necessary to watch YouTube videos, but the rest of this article is interesting."

Comments

What if the local storage is made zero?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Flash player settings has an option to set the amount of local storage permitted for the player. What happens if I set that amount to zero and mark it permanent (i.e. check box remember)? Would it remove the ability of the flash player to set cookies?

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[characterZer0]

I have read that rm -rf ~/.adobe; mkdir ~/.adobe; chmod 000 ~/.adobe does the trick. Can anybody confirm?

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

No. None of us really uses Linux. We just say that to look cool.

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[jawtheshark]

Probably would work... Well, I'd simply do "rm ~/.adobe/*; chmod 500 ~/.adobe/*", which would be shorter and keep read/access rights to said directory.

That said, if Flash expects to be able to write to that directory, it might crash when it tries to utilize it. So it really isn't a foolproof method.

As per this moment, under .adobe in my home directory exists the following structure: "~/.adobe/Flash_Player/AssetCache/VSUUJTSX/". The directory is probably randomly generated just like profile directories in Mozilla (harder to predict in case of a flaw in the plugin/browser). In there are just files with the extensions .swz and .heu and one file called "cacheSize.txt". None of these files seems to be human readable (well, okay cacheSize.txt makes somehow sense). Oddly enough, the oldest file is from 25th September 2010. As I use my browser daily and don't mind youtube or the odd flash game, this is strange indeed. I would nearly say that they stopped using it.

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[symbolset]

If the site requires the ability to store flash evercookies as a cost of viewing the site, I'm OK with not being able to see their content. It's too much to pay.

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[beakerMeep]

Flash's behavior when disable cookies is really terrible, mostly due to developers that don't care about such a situation. However, this is pretty much the same with any given HTML/javascript web app. From my perspective simply blaming Flash isn't constructive.

The real problem is having multiple locations to store local data and no single place to clear it. I'd say the browsers and W3C should be the solution to this. They should really put their collective foot down and set a standard by which plugins are allowed to store data and integrate with the browser. This would go a long way towards solving a lot of the privacy concerns of Flash and HTML5. There would still be some tricks to identify a user (font list, user agent string, plugin versions, etc) but again the solution is the same.

Re:What if the local storage is made zero?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually did this and it does not work. Many sites are broken (hypem.com to name one of them). An alternative that works fine for me, is rm -rf ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia ; ln -s /tmp ~/.adobe ; ln -s /tmp ~/.macromedia. Since /tmp is cleared at every reboot, I get "session" cookies but never persistent ones. Yay.

Re:RTFA ??

[larry bagina]

Simple: this is slashdot and we hate flash and want to eliminate it. Except on the iPhone. We don't use the iPhone and don't know anybody that does, but it needs to support flash for some reason.

Re:Steve may have been right

[causality]

Ending the web's dependence on Flash is a lot like ending dependence on foreign energy.

1. It's a really good idea. 2. It's well within our ability to do it. 3. There are a million excuses for why no one is seriously committed to making it happen.

I think you've come up with an excellent analogy.

THIS is a summary?

[Rorschach1]

Seriously, WTF? How about a sentence telling us what the 'flash problem' is, and maybe a bit about WHY the article is interesting?

BetterPrivacy Plugin for Firefox will delete LSO

[Hyperhaplo]

Firefox plugin BetterPrivacy - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/ - will delete LSOs

It can be set up to automatically delete LSO on browser exit; on a timer (every x minutes/hours/days) or manually

It allows you to set a whitelist (protection list).

It doesn't 'solve' the problem; but in the mean time it at least breaks part of the cycle.

Also: Ghostery - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609/ - helps to stop the problem in the fire place.

Used with Ad Block Plus - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/ - it makes surfing the web much better.

The Wild West era ended when there was no one left to conflict with.. right?