Adobe’s newest version of its Flash Player, released in beta last month, features key privacy controls aimed at integrating with browsers for improved management of local storage, the company announced in its
in March. Adobe is seeking feedback on the beta release.
Adobe’s announcement follows
earlier this year of its efforts to improve privacy controls after privacy advocates and regulators raised concerns that some Web entities could be using Flash Player local stored objects inappropriately for online tracking purposes. These small files, which are often referred to as “Flash Cookies” in the mainstream media, have been highlighted by advocates as causing concern because they are more difficult to remove from Internet users’ computers than actual browser cookies.
Citing calls by the Federal Trade Commission for browser makers to improve their privacy controls, a report in
The Wall Street Journal
published in advance of Adobe’s announcement of Flash Player 10.3
the company’s plans "an important first step" in the effort to solve issues related to online tracking.
At a press conference earlier this year, Ed Felten, who is the FTC's chief technologist, said, “As of today, when you use the privacy controls in your browser, they don’t directly affect the treatment of Flash local shared objects” in
the FTC’s concerns.
Adobe officials have repeatedly spoken out against the use of the company’s local shared objects for such purposes.
With the new version, users “have a simpler way to clear local storage from the browser settings interface—similar to how users clear their browser cookies today,” Michelle Perkins explains in the Adobe Flash Platform Blog. “Flash Player 10.3 integrates control of local storage with the browser’s privacy settings in Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher and future releases of Apple Safari and Google Chrome” and “provides users with streamlined controls for managing their Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings.”
