The Security Mentor

There was a splash of news last spring about the next generation of cookies. Did you ever wonder what happened?

Cookies, you remember, are the little files that a web site can write to and read from your disk. Legitimate web sites store your shopping cart, identification, preferences and so on in cookies to make your life easier. Many places misuse cookies to create records of your travels through the web. Much security software now blocks or deletes these "tracking cookies".

So you'd expect advertisers to look for a way to store cookies that won't get deleted. Last spring's news was about a company that announced a way to store cookie-like information in "local shared object" files used by Flash, the program that runs all those obnoxious animated ads.

Is this evil, is it a threat, has it caught on, and is there anything you can do about it?

Certainly not evil per se. There are plenty of legitimate uses that benefit you, ask your permission and explain what's happening on your computer. A threat? Potentially. You may not want a record on your computer that you visited www.surprisebirthdaygifts.com. You may not want potentialemployer.com to know that you previously visited supportgroupfordiseasethatwouldbankruptthehealthplan.com.

Has it caught on? Not that I can tell. I installed the Firefox extension for viewing and deleting Flash cookies and found very few things, all of them safe and boring.

What can you do? Ignoring the whole issue seems to be safe for now. If you make a hobby out of privacy or just want to stay ahead of the game, you can follow the advice from Macromedia, who make Flash. They've been responsible citizens about the whole business, they don't want advertisers to misuse their technology, and their web site even explains how to turn off flash cookies.