Local Shared Objects

Spy vs Spy

I recently downloaded Adobe 8 and decided to pop the hood to see what I could see. A bit of playing around and a lot of web time yielded a not so new tracking device. (here)

A Flash LSO is a local stored object which is somewhat similar to a browser cookie but is saved by a Flash application and is browser agnostic.

These little buggers can bypass browser privacy settings, go to a *.sol directory apart from the cookie file, hold up to 100K, and can re-enable deleted cookies without triggering anti-viral programs. Oh joy. Even if your not worried about tracking, they are a major space sucker. No delete by date, and they just pile up. Another one of many reasons Windows run slower and slower as time goes by.

To deal with this you can remove the objects manually. LSO files are stored typically with a “.SOL” extension, within each user’s Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects. The more long term solution is to go to the Macromedia site and use their tool to reset your global privacy. I suggest going to Google first and reading up on deleting flash cookies.

While we're here, you should know about CCleaner. It's the freeware of choice ( I keep mine in the recycle icon) to tidy up cookies, extraneous registry crap, event files and general Windows clutter. If for profit companies and now the government want to leave their tools on your computer, they can pay rent on the space.