Flash Cookie Remover

Published on April 20, 2011 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

Adobe Flash Player has a property which imo is borderline illegal. So do other programs.

Background – websites and apps can (and do) place cookies on your system which are designed to make loading the website faster. They generally expire after a certain amount of time. Ideally, they aren’t supposed to collect info about you, especially if you gave no consent for them to do so (at least in my opinion) because that is a privacy violation. Usually cookies are just small pieses of text. Flash cookies are way different.

gHacks gives a good explanation of flash cookies and a link back to the original article about them here, as well as four ways to deal with them: A valuable article.

So, back to the topic: it puts a data collecting cookie on your system. Others can then harvest the info from these cookies, and do. Flash Cookies, a.k.a. Local Shared Objects (LSOs), are cookie-like data files that are stored on a computer. Flash Cookies are used by all versions of Adobe Flash Player.

“Cookies by their design constitute privacy concerns because they store data which may be retrieved by people or programs that are up to no good. Ordinary cleaners do remove regular cookies but do not remove these Flash Cookies, giving the user a false sense of security. Several services even use Flash Cookies as a data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, which is called 're-spawning'. So even if a user gets rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the ‘backup’. If you value your privacy these Flash Cookies should be removed.” – Softpedia

The Flash Cookies Cleaner application was developed to be a small tool that has been designed specifically to remove every Flash Cookie from your system.

It’s free, and I use it.

I stopped telling my mom where I went a long time ago.

Download link: http://www.flashcookiecleaner.com/

Comments (Page 1)

winstar4

on Apr 20, 2011

Hi DrJBHL,

Thanks for the information and the weblink.

DrJBHL

on Apr 20, 2011

Welcome, winstar4.

StevenAus22

on Apr 20, 2011

DrJBHL, did you just find out about Flash Cookies? Seems like they are a surreptitious way of gaining information about viewing habits, that normal browser cookie management doesn't protect.

Best regards,
Steven.

Disturbedcomputer

on Apr 20, 2011

will have to get it

OldMsgt

on Apr 20, 2011

I use cookienator which also removes flash cookies

DrJBHL

on Apr 20, 2011

StevenAus

reply 3

DrJBHL, did you just find out about Flash Cookies? Seems like they are a surreptitious way of gaining information about viewing habits, that normal browser cookie management doesn't protect.

Best regards,
Steven.

No Steven, but I'm a bit senile and it takes a while to remember all the things I want to write about, sometimes.

Thank G-d there's an app for that, and a cookie.

Lantec

on Apr 20, 2011

The Ghostery browser plugin for FF4 has an option to delete Flash & Silverlight cookies on exit. It seems to do a real good job with trackers period.

EternalRequiem

on Apr 20, 2011

Ah yes, this stuff. I discovered this a while back after reading an article about it and also watching a news broadcast

Uvah

on Apr 20, 2011

Thanks Doc.

inthebloodofeden

on Apr 20, 2011

DrJBHL

reply 6

Quoting StevenAus, reply 3DrJBHL, did you just find out about Flash Cookies? Seems like they are a surreptitious way of gaining information about viewing habits, that normal browser cookie management doesn't protect.

Best regards,
Steven.

No Steven, but I'm a bit senile and it takes a while to remember all the things I want to write about, sometimes.

Thank G-d there's an app for that, and a cookie.

For everyone using FF or Pale Moon, the best way to manage Flash Cookies (LSO's/SuperCookies) is the BetterPrivacy extension (latest version 1.50). I'm using it since long time and it works absolutely fine; besides, is highly configurable and plenty of options.

I know you are using Pale Moon, so just give it a try!

ekimragz

on Apr 20, 2011

Thank you Doc. That looks like a very worthwhile app!

Pbhead

on Apr 20, 2011

this will delete saved flash game data?

I would lose all my progress on gemcraft!

DrJBHL

on Apr 21, 2011

Lantec

reply 7

The Ghostery browser plugin for FF4 has an option to delete Flash & Silverlight cookies on exit. It seems to do a real good job with trackers period.

Some members have reported problems in Galleries with that extension... I think it was Uvah, but there were others as well.

inthebloodofeden

reply 10

Quoting DrJBHL, reply 6Quoting StevenAus, reply 3DrJBHL, did you just find out about Flash Cookies? Seems like they are a surreptitious way of gaining information about viewing habits, that normal browser cookie management doesn't protect.

Best regards,
Steven.

No Steven, but I'm a bit senile and it takes a while to remember all the things I want to write about, sometimes.

Thank G-d there's an app for that, and a cookie.

For everyone using FF or Pale Moon, the best way to manage Flash Cookies (LSO's/SuperCookies) is the BetterPrivacy extension (latest version 1.50). I'm using it since long time and it works absolutely fine; besides, is highly configurable and plenty of options.

I know you are using Pale Moon, so just give it a try!

Thanks for that info, Steven. inbloodofeden, it might be good as a preventive, but it won't remove the ones already there. I got rid of 11 such cookies with it already.

*edit - fixed. sorry Steven and inbloodofeden, the quoting thing gets us old folks confused.... still stand by the gist of what I wrote in the response to the BetterPrivacy... also there appear to be some extensions which don't play nicely with Forums/Galleries here.

StevenAus22

on Apr 21, 2011

Well, unless inthebloodofeden's name is Steven, that comment was not by a Steven.

Even though I didn't make the comment you were referring to, the BetterPrivacy extension has an option to "Delete Flash cookies by timer".

Best regards,
Steven.

EternalRequiem

on Apr 21, 2011

Always good to have a second line of defense, I have the BetterPrivacy but the link Dr put up and once I downloaded it it found 3 cookies the BP didn't find and remove as I said before always good to have 2 lines of defense

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