I School Master's Student Reveals Widespread Internet Tracking Practices

You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again

By Ryan Singel

More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.

Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not....

But the debate shouldn’t be about allowing browser cookies or not, according Ashkan Soltani, a UC Berkeley [School of Information] graduate student who helped lead the study.

“If users don’t want to be tracked and there is a problem with tracking, then we should regulate tracking, not regulate cookies,” Soltani said.

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