Disable Third-Party Flash cookies that track you on the Internet

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 1, 2013
Updated • May 27, 2018
Internet
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Flash cookies, or Local Shared Objects, are used for a variety of purposes: from Flash game saves to  storing site preferences or user tracking.

If you do not play browser games, at least none that are Flash-based, and also do not visit websites or services regularly that make use of Flash to save site preferences or other content, you may want to consider disabling Flash cookies permanently in the browser. And even if you visit sites regularly that save content, you may still want to consider disabling third-party Flash content that sites may store on your device.

Note that it may have unforeseen consequences but that is usually resolved quickly. All you need to do is enable the feature again to make use of it in the browser of choice.

Update: Only some browsers support Adobe Flash in 2018. The technology is on its way out; Adobe announced that it plans to retire Flash in 2020. Most browsers set Flash to click-to-play which means that Flash won't be activated unless you interact with the content or have whitelisted the site previously. End

What you can do

There are two primary options to prevent the saving of third-party Flash cookies on the system. You can either disable Flash which may not always be what you want as it will prevent all Flash content from being loaded in the browser, or make changes to the Flash configuration.

Visit the following website in a web browser that supports Flash. The global storage settings panel specifies the amount of disk space websites can use to store information on the computer.

disable flash cookies screenshot

Some websites may not only save first-party data on your system, but may also load content from other sites, an advertising banner, a Facebook like button or other scripts, that are then allowed to save data on your system as well.

Advertising companies use this system to save cookies on user systems to track them across domains. The company does not need to own the domains for that, all that is required is that the webmaster embeds scripts on the website that access third-party domains for that to happen.

You can uncheck the "allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer" preference to prevent this from happening to your system in the future. The main site you are on can still save contents while all third party scripts can't anymore. Note that sub-domains are seen as third party sites.

Example: site-A.com saves a Flash cookie on a user system. It loads contents from site-B.com and sub.site-A.com which both want to save cookies on the user system as well. If you have disabled third party Flash contents from being stored on the system, both sites won't be able to do so.

If you are certain that no site you visit uses Flash cookies to save important information, you can set the global storage slider to None to do so. Most sites should work just fine after you have done so. As noted earlier, some sites may not function properly if the allow third party content option is unchecked.

If you prefer to keep everything as is to avoid any issues with sites you visit regularly, you may be interested in programs that help you clean Flash cookies from your system regularly.

Last but not least, it is possible to change the settings for a specific application. To do so right-click on the Flash application to open the settings menu for that app.

flash cookies per app screenshot

You can modify the storage that you want the application to use. If you want to block it, simply set it to none.

Summary
Disable Third-Party Flash cookies that track you on the Internet
Article Name
Disable Third-Party Flash cookies that track you on the Internet
Description
Find out how to disable Third-Party Flash cookies that track you on the Internet in web browsers that still support Adobe Flash.
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Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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