In this post we will show you how to delete flash cookies, but firstly we need to ezplain what they are and why they are different from other cookies.
In this age of increased awareness about our online security and privacy many people try to protect themselves by concientiously deleting their cookies periodically or even every time they close their browser.
However this isn’t as secure or complete as you may first think – in a world where peoples online habits are of immense value to advertisers and retailers the need to track people has become big business and the need to get around cookie deletion was a problem the advertisers needed to address.
Enter the ‘Flash Cookie’
The Flash Cookie, as the name suggests, is a cookie that is placed on the system by sites that use the popular Adobe Flash platform to provide information and interactivity.
However, the major problem with these cookies is that they are more persistent than traditional cookies – because they are not stored in the same location as normal cookies they are not usually deleted by the browsers in-built cookie deletion utility so in order to delete flash cookies you need to do something different
As the existence of Flash Cookies is not that well known about outside of the more technically orientated world, advertisers have taken to using these Cookies as a means of tracking users.
Unfortunately, there is no direct user interface to delete Flash Cookies from within your Operating System itself, but Adobe do kindly provide a web based interface for the management of all kinds of settings related to Flash.
If you point your browser over to the Global Storage Settings Panel you will be presented with a Flash based user interface that will allow you to manipulate and manage the storage and handling of Flash Cookies.
A full tutorial on the use of the interface is beyond the scope of this article as the interface changes quite often, but the web interface has some good documentation to help the new user through all the settings and options.