Adobe Flash cookies pose vexing privacy questions

From InfoWorld: Adobe's Flash program is being used on heavily trafficked Web sites to collect information on how people navigate those sites even if people believe they've restricted the data collection, according to a new study.

The study comes as the U.S. government is evaluating how it uses cookies on its own Web sites. A cookie is a small piece of data that can record how a person has used the site. The information can be used to track, for example, how many times an advertisement has been viewed, allow someone to stay logged into a Web site or track the items in an online shopping cart.

Cookies don't identify individual users, but many users choose to restrict cookies through their Web browser preferences. Although cookie data is anonymous, some users worry about third-party advertising networks, for example, collecting data and building profiles.

Adobe's Flash program plug-in, which is used to view multimedia content and is installed on millions of computers worldwide, also stores cookies for user preferences such as the volume level of a video, wrote the researchers.

Many Web sites will use both HTTP and Flash cookies. Of six government Web sites studied, three used Flash cookies, including whitehouse.gov. The U.S. government requires a "compelling need" to use so-called persistent cookies -- which either must be deleted or expire to disappear -- on its Web sites, the researchers wrote.

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