Flash Cookies
Some people do not realize that Adobe’s Flash player actually includes cookies or site information outside of the normal cookies stored within a browser. Last week I was playing around and decided to see if I could block these cookies within Flash and determine if they were required. So I went to the Flash Manager on Adobe’s site and configured my local player using some recommendations I found on another site:
The recommendations included removing the check mark to allow third-party content. I then went looking for Flash videos. I did not appear to have any problems on YouTube, but did find some issues on other sites.
Even if you clear out the local Flash cookies via the online tool, a list of sites is still “left behind” on the local system. Below is the path on my Vista machine:
![clip_image002[4]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbyvyELcQDfhRnXde1X6_1s-vEtXkV1JL_RZLZpJFm-lIwWxde2eHgPElnr-p5HCCg2cyBfoP2d8ciwLaijR8_nHlWTzgqirt9Le8-xNEcSURfB4J8NeUUWHpq3l0B3f8HbZ561G_se-s/s1600-h/clip_image002%5B4%5D%5B2%5D.jpg "clip_image002[4]"){kind=small}
For example, I accessed a Symantec link this morning. I cleared out my Flash cookies, but a folder is still present under the path above:
![clip_image004[4]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBV1Iyxi-XOpUNx5UfU0bjyVKzh6Fb1kfVo10gUbK4DmL5qLwLIt9mbenprQHvkn0spEHnYjomZM_29bVOpMtnRsWbbkCXDLrJaQQz3scHaLyHmU42Y50WD6TFza07D3uiS06SuDh84B4/s1600-h/clip_image004%5B4%5D%5B2%5D.jpg "clip_image004[4]")
Notice the time stamp on the everyclickmatters.com folder. So at least on my machine, these folders remained even after I cleared all Flash cookies.
On a site note, a Firefox plug-in is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623 called Better Privacy that can block and manage Flash cookies locally.
