[METHOD] Removing Flash Cookies To Avoid Leaving Blackhat Footprints

I have seen some posts lately demonstrating that some of you are not aware of FLASH cookies. Yes, it is almost intuitive to clear your cookies but that isn't enough. I'll briefly explain what flash cookies are and how I avoid them. I don't claim for this to be comprehensive in regards to managing flash cookies but it has worked well for me. Anyone with an improvement on this method is invited to add it to this thread.

WHAT ARE FLASH COOKIES?
A large amount of websites you surf everyday use Adobe Flash to track users on their site and store information about them. However, unlike traditional cookies, flash cookies are not deleted when you do the typical "clear cookies" routine on your web browser. These flash cookies are also sometimes known as "super cookies" around the web.

HOW TO REMOVE FLASH COOKIES
For those of you who use Fire Fox, I highly recommend installing one of two add-ons:

Better Privacy or
Click & Clean

I like Better Privacy the best. It has a setting to delete flash cookies at a regular interval as you surf around the Internet. Mine kicks in and wipes the cookies out every 3 minutes.

Another option is to open up your Flash player on your computer. Go to the "Global Storage Settings Panel" in the list on the left and find the option that says "Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer" and unselect it. This will prevent additional cookies from being added to your computer in the future.

To remove flash cookies already on your computer go to the "Website Storage Settings Panel" and delete them one-by-one (kind of a pain if you are doing this for the first time - I had over 800 when I first discovered these suckers). If you have a ton I recommend doing the Mozilla plug-ins instead and you can delete all of them in one shot.


If you want to do some additional reading on this subject, I recommend these two links:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/

http://www.itworld.com/internet/118784/how-murder-a-flash-cookie-zombie?page=0,1

Hope that helps. Remember, I don't claim for this to be comprehensive, so please feel free to chip in. This is just what has worked for me so far and I wanted to give back to BHW for all that I've learned.

Good luck!

Nice post.

Footprints and how to minimize them are subjects that a lot of marketers neglect.

When I started out, I learned the hard way about footprints, so it's great to see members giving away tips like this.

I use ccleaner

donduck said:

I use ccleaner

Click to expand...

ccleaner not wipe that flash cookies..better use ff addon op suggested..

I use better privacy and cc cleaner - my browser is always squeeky clean

Another simple method to clear flash cookies is by using the following URL:


Just visit and click on 'Delete All' options and you have just removed all of the footprints

Sky Walker said:

There is also a handy application called CCleaner which makes the job done perfectly.Its a free download.

Click to expand...

donduck said:

I use ccleaner

Click to expand...

badut jenaka said:

ccleaner not wipe that flash cookies..better use ff addon op suggested..

Click to expand...

Ah, I forgot to mention ccleaner. Thanks for mentioning it. I was aware it existed but have never used it personally. Hmmm, so there is a discrepancy on whether ccleaner wipes flash cookies based on the comments made above.

It looks like the developer of ccleaner claims to clean flash cookies:

http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-settings/cleaning-flash-cookies

Anyone want to dispute this claim or is the common consensus that ccleaner is enough to wipe out flash cookies?

donduck said:

I use ccleaner

Click to expand...

Same here. It's great.

Ccleaner and the Better Privacy firefox addon will erase all flash/LSO cookies but they will not erase evercookies. Evercookies are persistent and will regenerate themselves after clearing cookies by normal means, even when using multiple browsers. Someone has recently invented a firefox plugin to quarantine the evercookies when using the private browsing mode.You can read about it here...



and download here...

Why not to just disable Adobe FLASH plug in? will it help to avoid storage of any flash cookies.
I have settings in adobe flash setting manager to deny all cookies and storage. >

teeniegenie said:

Another option is to open up your Flash player on your computer. Go to the "Global Storage Settings Panel" in the list on the left and find the option that says "Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer" and unselect it. This will prevent additional cookies from being added to your computer in the future.

Click to expand...

The problem with that is every time you use Ccleaner or Better Privacy, it erases your global settings (settings.sol), unless you make an exception for it.

Sky Walker said:

There is also a handy application called CCleaner which makes the job done perfectly.Its a free download.

Click to expand...

This^^

If you want to test how unique and traceable your browser is (browser footprints), you can test it here...

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

lol...they were able to identify my browser out of over one and a half million.

If you want to see if your computer is storing flash/LSO cookies, evercookies or any other kind of supercookies, take this test...

https://labs.isecpartners.com/breadcrumbs/breadcrumbs.html

Here's another evercookie test...

http://samy.pl/evercookie/