[LINK] RFI: Intrusive Internet Mechanisms

[rene]

On Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:31:37 +1100, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> At 08:55 AM 2/12/2010, Birch, Jim wrote:
>> Is this too simple? (or trusting?)
>>
>> Right-click a flash object, select either local or global settings,
>> set the local storage to zero for specific or all sites.  There's
>> also options for accessing third party info, which is off by
>> default for me.

It's not that it's too 'trusting', but that it doesn't work well enough for 
my preferences. 

What it does do is prevent the creation of files in the \Flash
Player\#SharedObjects directory with names like ABC_iView_2.sol. (I'd 
forgotten that - months ago I set storage to 0, but then yesterday I 
deleted all *.sol files in the flash directories which caused that setting 
to be deleted and so such files commenced reappearing on my computer).

However, what it does **not** do, is prevent prevent the creation - in the 
\flashplayer\sys\ directory - of sub-folders that are site names which 
contain a settings.sol for each site. Granted  the content of these files 
does not appear to be as problematic as the other type of .sol file, but I 
don't like anything that keeps a record of every site (that runs flash) 
that I visit. I don't know whether those files enable a site to e.g. keep a 
record of how often one views flash files on a particular site, or what. 

[...]
Jan wrote:
> When I chose global settings, I was taken to the Adobe site. Why
> would I need to set anything on a third party in order to manage
> software performance on my own machine? That seems really odd.

Yes indeed. However, what happens when a person appears to set preferences 
on the Adobe site is that the Adobe site creates a file named 
"settings.sol" and uploads it to the person's computer in the 
\flashplayer\sys\ directory. [NB: If deleting site named sub-folders from 
the /sys/ directory, take care not to delete the settings.sol file that is 
directly in the /sys/ directory (not in a sub directory of /sys/) because 
if you delete that file, the global preference settings are gone.]

> On Firefox I use a block add-in called Flashblock. I have to click on
> the mini-window to let the flash through. Saves a lot of unnecessary
> downloading. I just looked at the settings for this add-on and they
> include blocking Silverlight as well, which I don't even know what
> that is. I turned it on to block.

FWIW, and in case you haven't already heard of it, on looking around 
recently I've noticed people talking about a Firefox add-on called 
"BetterPrivacy", which apparently automatically deletes flash cookies on 
browser shut down, and probably does other things as well. I've no idea 
whether it deletes both types of site flash cookies that I've referred to 
above. But perhaps it may be worth trying.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/

Irene