Chrome, IE To Allow Users To Delete Flash Cookies

Trailrunner7 writes "The upcoming release of Adobe Flash Player 10.3 will give users of most of the major browsers the ability to delete Flash cookies in much the same way that they're able to erase normal Web cookies, thanks to a better integration with privacy settings in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. The addition of the ability for users to delete the cookies set by plug-ins and browser add-ons gives them better control of the security and privacy of the content on their machines and is designed to address a serious issue that's been plaguing Flash for some time. Security and privacy experts have warned about the implications of so-called Flash cookies, which are set by Flash and difficult for users to find and delete."

Comments

And what about evercookie?

[elucido]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evercookie
http://samy.pl/evercookie/

Evercookie is unstoppable, irrevocable, undeleteable, and it represents a new trend. When is Google and Microsoft going to do something about this? Or do they and others conspire to use this evil mega cookie to track us?

Re:And what about evercookie?

[The MAZZTer]

File a bug on the Chrome bug tracker. The latest I can find is that Chrome should be erasing it all if you use Incognito, except for the Flash LSO.

Re:And what about evercookie?

[icebike]

Or run the browser and all of its minions (including flash) in a sandbox, which allows you to snap shot it at some point in time, and flush that sandbox after each browsing session and restore from the snapshot at the start of each new session.

As long as every program has access to the Windows Registry, you will have to sandbox that as well, allowing access to a shadow copy.

But the real problem here is that Joe Sixpack is not in a position to be knowledgeable about all of this. Criminal sanctions against users of Evercookie might keep corporate marketing droids from going down that path, but they won't stop the off-shore porn sites or gambling sites from embedding this type of technology.

Re:And what about evercookie?

[h4rr4r]

Considering the most sold beers in the USA include bud lite and miller lite, I can safely say he knows nothing about beer. He is a connoisseur of beer flavored waters though.

Firefox

[just_another_sean]

And for Firefox users there is Better Privacy.

From the Better Privacy site:

Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.

emphasis mine

Re:Firefox

[BZ]

Actually, Firefox 4 supports this as well, out of the box.

Works in Firefox 4 as well

[BZ]

This also works in Firefox 4 last I checked; I'm not sure why the article just talks about Chrome and IE.

Re:Works in Firefox 4 as well

[asa]

Boris is 100% correct. Mozilla shipped this feature in Firefox 4 and if you have the newest Flash version, it "just works."

This story's headline is misleading. It should be "IE, Firefox, and Chrome..." because IE shipped it first, Firefox shipped it second, and Chrome just now got around to shipping it.

Only one way to be sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

In linux just link ~/.macromedia to /dev/null

It turns out /dev/null is something of a cookie monster.

Re:ability to delete Flash cookies

[MrL0G1C]

..And for windows users, delete the /macromedia directory! (in ?:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\) or C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\