Notes from the Electronic Cottage 8/27/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Thought you had cookies on your computer under control? Think again – here come Flash cookies. Here are links to information that tells you more about how they work and how to control them on your computer.

The paper by researchers at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law (Note – to download the paper you may have to register for a free SSRN account.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1446862

To get the new Firefox broswer “Better Privacy:”
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623

Site for “Ccleaner,” which works on Windows machines:
www.ccleaner.com/

Link to download “Flush,” which works on Macintoshes:
machacks.tv/2009/01/27/flushapp-flash-cookie-removal-tool-for-os-x/

To find the Flash cookie files on your own hard drive:
Windows: Look for files with an ³.SOL² extension, within each user¹s Application Data directory, under Macromedia\FlashPlayer\#SharedObjects.
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/FlashPlayer/##SharedObjectgs and ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/FlashPlayer/macromedia.com/Support/flashpla
yer/sys

For a more full report on Flash cookies, see www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/