[LINK] RFI: Intrusive Internet Mechanisms

[rene]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2010 10:04:27 +1000, rene wrote:
> 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.]

And another thing - I've become aware that the above global "settings.sol" 
file (created by the Adobe site), also stores the name of all sites/domains 
that have set flash cookies, and such info appears to stay in that file, 
even if a user subsequently deletes flash cookies and/or site named 
sub-folders. So, for anyone trying to achieve better control over what's 
stored on their computer in relation to Flash use, it may be worth deleting 
the global settings.sol file and creating a new one via the Adobe site (and 
doing something to make it read-only thereafter).

Also, on the topic of the Firefox BetterPrivacy plug in, there's an imo 
very interesting post about that on the below 'reviews' page. The 
post/review I'm referring to is currently the fifth one down the page, 
titled:
Why Privacy+ and BetterPrivacy Don't Delete All LSOs
by Al on February 8, 2010

I have no idea whether most of the info in that post is accurate or not, 
but it strikes me as highly likely. (The only thing in it that I am sure is 
not correct, at least if using Windows XP Home, is the idea of "Click 
Properties, and then tick the "Read Only" option, making the (global) LSO a 
Read Only file", because, as previously mentioned, that does not work for 
the purpose of actually making the file read-only in Windows XP Home (and 
most probably not in some other versions of Windows).

Irene