intertwingly

This is fixable, see

  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Plugins:ClearPrivacyData

Feedback appreciated.

Feedback: enabling responsible plugin authors to do the right thing is not something I would consider a complete fix.  A complete fix would look something like a sandbox.  Until this is addressed, I would suggest that the documentation for private browsing is both misleading and incomplete.

Posting such a script is dangerous!

$> cd ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*
bash: cd: /Users/peritus/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*: No such file or directory
$> rm -rf * # <-- ouch!

Modified the script to be less dangerous.  Thanks!

There’s a nice study of Flash cookie usage—including using Flash cookies to “respawn” HTTP cookies—here: [link]

The quoted blog source ("What if there was a type of cookie that could...") is incorrectly sourced to “Dave Brooks”, while the link is correct. The proper Author is “I’m A Super”. :)

Although the author was incorrectly cited, I do appreciate you taking the time to have a proper link. Excellent script, by the way.

Regards,

I’m a super.com

Sorry about that.  Attribution corrected.  FWIW, I drew the wrong conclusion from this page.

Another important “feature” of Flash cookies is that they are cross-browser. That is to say that even when you navigate with two different browsers from the same machine, the Flash information is shared:
[link]

Howdy, longtime issue... Macromedia Flash Player has offered greater-than-cookie-sized local storage since 2002. Never really got onto the radar, although there’s a yearly scare campaign on it. (First such was United Virtualities' PIE in 2005, if you’d like to check on it.)

The initial interface was tricky, because browsers had no such capabilities, and a SWF could be sized on the page smaller than its control dialog. That’s why there’s a special macromedia.com/adobe.com UI to inspect your own local storage.

These days Player hooks up with the “Private Browsing” sessions available in many browsers, and we hope to work with browser vendors to further integrate its control into their interfaces.

The issue is complicated, however... some banks and other institutions use local storage as a device confirmation method... meanwhile search query “adobe ftc cookie respawning” shows an aspect of non-consensual use. Things must work for all.

Titles generally aren’t as juicy as the scares on the webcam, however.... ;-)

jd/adobe

Hi John.  I appreciate that this might be complicated for others, but I will simply state that the issue is not complicated for me.

Nor is my intent to scare anyone, merely to educate.

On OS X:

rm -rf     ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/#SharedObjects/*/*
chmod 0500 ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/#SharedObjects/*
rm -rf     ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/*
chmod 0500 ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys

Φανταστείτε ένα cookie που: Παραμένει στον υπολογιστή σας για απεριόριστο χρόνο Αποθηκεύει τουλάχιστον 100kb δεδομένων και δεν έχει ανώτατο όριο μεγέθους Δεν εντοπίζεται από το browser σας Αποστέλλει δεδομένα για τα site που έχετε επισκεφθεί, χωρίς...

Sam,

my understanding is that, given the latest versions of Firefox and Flash, “private browsing” will indeed do the expected thing with respect to Flash cookies. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Plugins:PrivateMode for the relevant NPAPI extension).

Also notice that there are similar concerns with HTML5 local storage. See, for instance, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527667.

Best regards, Julian

Thanks Sam. I’ve been using the various panels of the Flash Player Settings Manager to deal with Flash cookies, but found it not very convenient. Your approach looks hopeful.

Here’s the link to the 6 panels at the Flash Player Settings Manager:
[link]

Gary

The steps in this post make the Flash plugin (10,0,45,2 on Ubuntu 10.04) crash on certain SWF files, like the D8 videos embedded in this post.  At least with Chromium and Firefox 3.6.4 it doesn’t take down the browser...

With the chmod commands, does this prevent flash cookies from being stored going forward? I haven’t seen any cookies show up since I ran these commands.

I did something more radical but which is also less likely to cause problems:

( crontab -l ; printf '0\t1\t*\t*\t*\t/bin/rm -rf %s/.macromedia\n' "$HOME" ) | crontab -

Keep Flash from setting cookies on Mac OS X...

Sam,

Changing directory permissions will break certain sites that appear to rely on writing a cookie they can then immediately read back (various video sharing sites for example).

My preferred solution is a cron job:

$ crontab -l 
*/10 * * * * rm -rf "${HOME}/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player"

Sun Bug ID: 6822370 ReentrantReadWriteLock: threads hung when there are no threads holding onto the lock TIL about -XX:+UseMembar Deleting Flash Cookies Excellent tip...

[link]...