1317 - Cookies

Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies.



That's what I'm eating while I'm going to tell you about computer cookies. I found the following article about FLASH cookies.

Have you ever heard of Flash Cookies? Don't worry, you're not alone. Most people don't know that Adobe's Flash Player allows sites to store data on your computer. These data stores are called Local Storage Objects (LSO) by Adobe or Flash Cookies by the rest of the world.

Unlike regular browser cookies, you can't control Flash Cookies with your browser's privacy settings. That's bad, but that's not nearly as bad as the fact that these insidious Flash Cookies can re-spawn regular browser cookies. In other words, if you've deleted a tracking cookie, the Flash Cookies on your machine can restore the traditional cookie that you've deleted.

So with this information off I go to the knower off all knowledge, WIKIPEDIA. Click the link to find out even more.

Are you back? I went to the directory on my computer and found 30 to 40 Flash cookies. Delete x 40 and I found something in them that was interesting. Quantserve.com, it was all over the place sucking my information for marketeers.

So I found this INFO and followed the directions to block it in my browser. We'll see how it works.

So with that done, I ran across a way to block THIRD PARTY COOKIES! And guess what. All those sites I was complaining about loading slowly a few posts back? No more slow. Even my own site comes up a lot faster. (don't block first party cookies because some sites won't work without them)

Here's how in IE8.
Click on tools,
internet options,
privacy,
advanced,
click override automatic cookie handling,
BLOCK third party cookies,
click OK.

All the blogs that used to be slow now pop right up (update - for the most part). If you want to see who's trying to load what on your computer, temporarily click PROMPT instead of BLOCK. But you'll want to put it back to block because you'll be clicking no no no no no no forever.