Beware of Flash player settings

If you thought blocking cookies was enough to stop sites from gathering information, watch out for local shared objects in the Flash player. This is a place the Flash player can use to store data, if you allow it to. As with cookies, the technique itself isn't harmful, it all depends on what is done with it. And if it's up to United Virtualities it will be used for the same purposes that make people block cookies, that is gather user information.

But there is a way to configure what the Flash player is allowed to do. With the Macromedia Flash Player Settings Manager you can control its privacy, security and storage settings. I changed all settings so nothing is allowed. And by using the FlashBlock extension all Flash movies are blocked until I decide I want to see one. The advantage of using Firefox.