Tuesday, March 31, 2009
6:52 PM

Browser Privacy Package: Disabling Flash Cookies, Google Analytics and Google Ads tracking

Flash cookies are a way to identify you even if you disabled your browsers identification and even all your cookies. Here's a guide how to disable flash cookies. Basically it deletes ~/.macromedia and creates a symlink to /dev/null instead. :) I suggest to delete .macromedia/Flash_Player and symlink that to /dev/null. That way it won't interfere with other macromedia software.

You can see what cookies are already installed with e.g.
find ~/.macromedia -iname '*.sol'
strings .macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/#skype.com/settings.sol# helps to see what's inside the cookies.
You probably also want to disable or restrict google's cookies. And you might want to opt out of Google Analytics. A quick overview and opt-out page for the other large advertising group's cookies
is also available.

Also check how to disable Facebook tracking you on other websites. And you may just want to install the Chrome AdThwart extension.

The just released Flash 10.1 supports a mode without flash cookies if your browser supports a private surfing mode and Flash is compatible with your browser's setting. I think that's mostly Firefox.

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