Google Chrome Canary recently introduced the option to clear plug-in related temporary contents when clearing the browsing data, and it appears that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will follow suit.

A recent post on the Internet Explorer blog highlights the change: Microsoft has added relevant APIS back when Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 was released. With Adobe’s implementation of the new controls in Flash Player 10.3, it is now possible to delete Flash Cookies directly in Internet Explorer.

Adobe is implementing the new controls in Flash Player 10.3 which is currently available as a release candidate. Users who want to clean Flash Cookies in Internet Explorer need to download and install the Flash Player 10.3 release candidate, but do not need to make direct changes to Internet Explorer. The final version of Adobe Flash Player 10.3 will be released in the near future.

Microsoft has created a demo page where users can test the new feature.

You can use the demo page to create a Flash Cookie which gets saved on your system. You can test that by pressing F5 or reloading the page with a click on the reload button. The page should echo the information that a Flash Cookie is stored on your system.

This Flash Cookie, along with all others, will be deleted if you delete Internet Explorer’s browsing history. You can delete the browsing history under Tools > Safety > Delete Browsing History. Please note that you need Adobe Flash Player 10.3 or newer for this to work.

Both Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 support the feature out of the box.

The demonstration page works flawlessly under Google Chrome as well, which means that Canary users can test their browser’s cookie cleaning functionality as well.

Other browser developers like Mozilla have already announced that they will integrate Flash Cookies cleaning in future browser versions as well.

It seems as if we are finally able to resolve the Flash Cookies problem once and for all.

It still means that you have to click on an extra link to open the settings before you can delete the additional objects in the Chrome browser, but that’s better than providing no link at all.

The latest build of Google Chrome Canary is showing improvements in this regard. It now offers the option to delete cookies and plug-in data natively without opening the Flash storage page after the initial local cleanup of temporary browsing data.

Flash cookies are often used by advertisers and marketing companies to track users on the Internet. This in addition to standard cookies. The core advantage of Flash cookies from a company’s point of view is that they are harder to access and delete on the user side which makes the tracking more effective.

This is now changing in Google Chrome with the inclusion of clearing plug-in data directly in the browser.

The standard “Adobe Flash Player storage settings link has been removed from the Clear Browsing Data.

The new feature is currently only available in the latest Chrome Canary builds. It is likely that it will be moved quickly to to be included in Dev, Beta and eventually Chrome stable builds.

The option to delete Flash cookies is enabled by default when a user clicks on the Clear browsing data button in the Chrome options. This suggests that more users will clear their Flash cookies from now on, at least in the Chrome browser. It could lead to some problems on the other hand, considering that Flash cookies are used by gaming sites to store high-scores and other information.

Chrome users can also use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Del to quickly open the Clear Browsing Data menu.

It is likely that the native integration of the Flash plugin in the Chrome browser has made that possible. (via Browser Scene)

You can get more information about Flash Cookies in a guide we have posted a few years ago. Adobe has now announced that they have plans to “LSO management with the browser UI” which would mean that users would be able to delete those cookies just like they are able to delete regular cookies.

Most recently, we’ve been collaborating with browser vendors to integrate LSO management with the browser UI. The first capability, one that we believe will have the greatest immediate impact, is to allow users to clear LSOs (and any local storage, such as that of HTML5 and other plugin technologies) from the browser settings interface—similar to how users can clear their browser cookies today. Representatives from several key companies, including Adobe, Mozilla and Google have been working together to define a new browser API (NPAPI ClearSiteData) for clearing local data, which was approved for implementation on January 5, 2011. Any browser that implements the API will be able to clear local storage for any plugin that also implements the API.

Adobe basically has created a new browser api which can be used by the browser to clear the local storage. This throws the ball to the browser developers who now need to evaluate if and how they can implement this new option in their browser.

Another interesting change is that Adobe wants to integrate Flash Player Settings Manager directly “Control Panels or System Preferences on Windows, Mac and Linux”. While that’s hopefully optional it will give users a direct easier way of accessing those settings.

The first browser to roll out with the new feature will be Google Chrome dev which may offer the feature in a few weeks.

Interested users find the full blog post over at the Adobe Blog.

Take a look at our Flash Cookies Explained article if you have not heard about this sort of cookies before, it will provide the overview needed.

Flash Cookies View will automatically display the flash cookies (also known as Local Shared Objects) that are stored on the computer system. Each Flash cookie is displayed in its own row that lists information that includes the originating url, file name, time the cookie was created and modified, the file size and file path.

The data can be sorted by each available column which makes it easier to locate specific contents. A search is provided as well to find cookies that contain the keywords entered in the search form.

The software program will display flash cookies that are stored in the default location of the operating system by default. It does however provide the option to change that default location to another path.

Selected items can be saved in a text document or added to an html report. It is furthermore possible to delete selected flash cookies and to change the display mode from cookie values to hex values.

Flash Cookies View is a portable software program for all supported Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program has been released yesterday and is available for download at the Nirsoft website.

We explained Flash Cookies in detail back in 2007 when a larger group of Internet users became aware of them. More than two years have passed since then with Flash cookies still playing a major role on many popular web services and for many advertising agencies.

Here are four options to deal with Flash cookies:

Option 1: Adobe Flash Player Settings

Probably the best option to deal with Flash cookies is to open the Adobe Flash Player settings. Users can look at the stored Flash cookies, delete some or all and change several options that change or even block Flash cookies on the user system.

Option 2: The manual way

Flash Cookies are stored on the local computer system. Their location varies depending on the operating system. Flash cookies are stored as *.sol files in the operating system. Here are the locations they can usually be found in:

• Windows: LSO files are stored typically with a “.SOL” extension, within each user’s Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects.
• Mac OS X: For Web sites, ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player. For AIR Applications, ~/Library/Preferences/[package name (ID) of your app].
• GNU-Linux: ~/.macromedia, ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects, ~/.adobe

The process of deleting those flash cookies could be automated with the right software program, e.g. CCleaner for Windows.

Option 3: Firefox add-on Better Privacy

The Firefox add-on Better Privacy can delete Flash cookies regularly to get rid of them automatically with options to whitelist some Flash cookies that are needed, e.g. for storing high scores on your favorite gaming website or playback settings on Youtube.

Option 4: Flash Cookie Cleaner (Windows software)

Flash Cookie Cleaner is a software program for the Windows operating system. The portable software program can be used to delete all stored Flash cookies of the logged in user. It is available at the developer’s website.

Adobe is providing a website with options to change Flash Cookie behavior. Users can change the storage space – default 100K – or deny access to Flash Cookies to websites that they have already visited.

It’s not a practical solution though. Objection on the other hand is a Firefox add-on that is giving access to the Flash Cookies right in the browser. It is not possible to change settings with the add-on but it provides an easy way to delete selected (or all) Flash Cookies.

The add-on provides an automatic search to find the location of the Local Shared Objects Folder on the system. It was not able to detect mine and I had to manually add it by browsing to the correct location. According to Wikipedia Flash Cookies are located in..

• Windows: LSO files are stored typically with a “.SOL” extension, within each user’s Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects.
• Mac OS X: For Web sites, ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player. For AIR Applications, ~/Library/Preferences/[package name (ID) of your app].
• GNU-Linux: ~/.macromedia

All Flash Cookies stored on the system are displayed once the folder has been correctly identified. A click on a Flash Cookie displays its contents. The user has the option to delete selected Flash Cookies only or all of them in one go.

Users can delete the cookies in that directory regularly or on a website. There is no direct way in Firefox to delete those cookies. That is, until now. The Firefox extension Better Privacy is a cookie manager for LSO Flash Objects and DOM Storage Objects. Flash Cookies (Local Shared Objects) are placed on the computer by a Flash application like the Youtube Video Player.

These cookies can be set to never expire which is obviously an excellent opportunity to track and analyze users. Another difference between flash and normal cookies is the size limitation. Normal cookies cannot exceed 4KB while Flash Cookies have a default size of 100 Kilobyte but the range is between 0 and Unlimited Kilobytes !

Better Privacy deletes Flash Cookies and DOM Storage cookies by deleting them on every startup. This setting can be changed to prevent the deletion of flash cookies that are needed. Several browser games make use of Flash cookies to save the progress of the player. The alternative option is to delete them manually in the options that are provided by the add-on.

Go to Youtube, increase or decrease the volume of the videos and delete all cookies afterwards. You will notice that the volume level is still at the same level when you close your browser and open it again. This is done with so called Local Shared Objects, better known as Flash cookies. The main question is of course how a computer can be checked for Flash cookies and how it would be possible to delete those cookies again.

This is actually a very tricky thing. I was searching for a way to check them on my computer but could not find it. After reading some information on the Adobe Flash Player website I was able to realize that the only possibility to check them was to open a page on the Adobe site which would show them.

The so called Settings Manager can be accessed from the Adobe website but is running locally on your computer. The Website Storage Settings display all Flash cookies that are currently saved on your computer. You can delete flash cookies from individual sites or all at once. It is also possible to increase or decrease the Kilobyte size of all information that are stored on your computer.

Adobe does not have access to the settings that you see in the Settings Manager or to personal information on your computer.

No Flash Cookies will be saved if you go into Global Storage Settings and disable the option “Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer”.

47 websites did store Flash cookies on my computer and I decided to delete all of them and disable the feature to be on the safe site. Did you know about Flash cookies ? How many did you find on your pc ?