{"id":106,"date":"2010-02-14T14:38:46","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T14:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/?p=106"},"modified":"2011-03-19T14:44:40","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T14:44:40","slug":"consumer-privacy-eroded-by-flash-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/2010\/02\/consumer-privacy-eroded-by-flash-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer privacy eroded by Flash cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you know about &#8220;Flash     cookies&#8221; and consumer privacy? This <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com\/weblog\/2010\/02\/flash-cookies-and-consumer-privacy.html\" target=\"_blank\">Demystified blog<\/a> has an excellent expos\u00e9&#8230; see also:<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1446862\" target=\"_blank\">pilot             study of the use of &#8216;Flash cookies&#8217;<\/a> by popular websites.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We find that more than 50% of the sites in our sample are using flash          cookies to store information about the user. Some are using it to &#8216;respawn&#8217;          or re-instantiate HTTP cookies deleted by the user. Flash cookies often          share the same values as HTTP cookies, and are even used on government          websites to assign unique values to users. Privacy policies rarely disclose          the presence of Flash cookies, and user controls for effectuating privacy          preferences are lacking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>http:\/\/billmullins.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/lso-flash-cookies-serious-attack-on.html<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a major advantage for an advertiser to employ Flash cookies,          not the least of which is; they are virtually unknown to the average          user. Equally as important from an advertisers perspective is; they          remain active on a system even after the user has cleared cookies and          privacy settings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>To call this a deceptive practice would be a major          understatement.<\/strong> Crooked, immoral, fraudulent, illegal, are just some          of the words that come to mind.<\/p>\n<p>There are tools to help you delete these unwanted sneaky cookies&#8230; for Firefox, use <a title=\"BetterPrivacy\" href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/betterprivacy\/\" target=\"_blank\">BetterPrivacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you know about &#8220;Flash cookies&#8221; and consumer privacy? This Demystified blog has an excellent expos\u00e9&#8230; see also: A pilot study of the use of &#8216;Flash cookies&#8217; by popular websites. We find that more than 50% of the sites in our sample are using flash cookies to store information about the user. Some are using &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/2010\/02\/consumer-privacy-eroded-by-flash-cookies\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Consumer privacy eroded by Flash cookies&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p415hC-1I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}