Bits'N'Bytes April 2011
What are cookies, and are they dangerous?
This is a question that I've often
been asked. Basically they're small
text files with some of your details
that most web sites install in your
computer so that they can identify
repeat visitors. Altho' cookies are
normally inert text objects which
can't in themselves do any serious
damage, there are some which are
not normal.
One such is Adobe's Flash cookie which is not a true
cookie. It's otherwise known as a Local Shared Object
(LSO). LSO’s are capable of storing 100 kb’s of
information for an indefinite amount of time by default.
When you clear your browser history in Internet
Explorer, Firefox or Opera on Windows, Linux, or OS X
LSO’s are not cleared from Adobe’s local repository.
Other sites can also use these LSO's to store persistent
data on your computer. What's worse is that LSO's can
be used to spawn copies of previously deleted normal
cookies. Go to this site to see & control LSO's on one's
computer.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/e
n/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
If you click this link, then you’ll access the Flash Player
Settings Manager,and see a list of all the sites currently
storing information your computer. It's complicated to
remove LSO's using the 'Settings Manager' tools.
Fortunately there's a Firefox add on (BetterPrivacy)
which makes it easy. I've installed this add on, and was
surprised to find 98 LSO's on my Linux system, with an
option to delete them. Try 'Ccleaner' or Flash Cookies
Cleaner 1.2 (both freeware) to remove LSC's if you
don't use Firefox.
There are a couple more nasties of which to beware.
One such is the so-called 'Zombie Cookie' – a self
restoring cookie. And difficult to remove because a copy
of the regular cookie is stored in an LSO for later
restoration if the original has been deleted. Controlling
LSO's will deal with them. And that brings us to
Evercookie, which is yet another way to store cookie-
like information without using a true cookie.
Evercookie is actually an open-source JavaScript
programming tool. Evercookies are self-regenerative.
The Evercookie data is stored in eight different places
so that, if the data is removed from one place, it can be
restored from another. This strategy makes Evercookies
impervious to common cookie-removal tools.
Fortunately, Evercookies can be blocked. Because
they're JavaScript-based, controlling JavaScript in
your browser also controls Evercookies. Firefox's
'NoScript' extension will control 'EverCookies. The
developers of Ccleaner claim that it can delete
EverCookies. Bleachbit is another free program to do
the same. It can be obtained from:
http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/download for Linux
or Windows.
Now that you've been warned and armed, 'Go hunting
for bear'! Good luck
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