Company Bypasses Cookie-Deleting Consumers

###THIS IS OLDER INFO BUT HAVE NOT SEEN IT MENTIONED HERE###

___________________



March 31, 2005

Company Bypasses Cookie-Deleting Consumers



By Antone Gonsalves Courtesy of TechWeb News

United Virtualities is offering online marketers and publishers technology that attempts to undermine the growing trend among consumers to delete cookies planted in their computers.
The New York company on Thursday unveiled what it calls PIE, or persistent identification element, a technology that's uploaded to a browser and restores deleted cookies. In addition, PIE, which can't be easily removed, can also act as a cookie backup, since it contains the same information.

Cookies are small files often uploaded to people's computers as they visit websites run by retailers, entertainment companies, newspapers and other businesses. The text files contain information that's used to track visitors' behavior, or to offer visitors products or services based on information gathered during previous visits, a process called personalization. In addition, cookie-gathered information is often pivotal for advertising campaigns and e-mail marketing.

According to JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corp., 58 percent of Internet users have deleted the tiny files, essentially making many consumers anonymous during site visits. In addition, 39 percent of consumers are deleting cookies from their primary computer monthly.

United Virtualities's PIE helps combat this consumer behavior by leveraging a feature in Flash MX called local shared objects. Flash MX is a Macromedia Inc. application for developing multimedia Web content, user interfaces and Web applications. The technology runs on a Flash Player that the company says is deployed on 98 percent of Internet-capable computers.



CONTINUED AT:


http://internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160400749









SNOWIE

 

Hi,
Any idea how this thingie gets deployed?
Mrk

 

It gets stored on your PC according to your settings for Macromedia Flash, which are totally separate from the security settings in your browser. Flash settings for your browser are here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html
(as long as you have Flash enabled in your browser, of course).

 

If understanding this correctly.....MacroMediaFlash is needed to employ this exploit.........because MacroMediaFlash is not installed on any of my computers....I have not really give the question of how this exploit is install very much consideration.......obviously it would take MacroMediaFlash to work.........so, seems the best way of going would be to not install MacroMediaFlash...............

While there are Programs using MacroMediaFlash it should not be difficult to find replacements........

Most likely MacroMediaFlash is already installed on your computer......so perhaps to avoid being exploited.....the question should be "do I want MacroMediaFlash on my computer?"

 

Hi MrKvonic

See if this link helps with the overview at all:- Epic Flash Cookie Page


The link below tells you how to set Macromedia Flash Player so that it won't accept being read from an external site:-

Flash Player Help

Firefox Users who are concerned might like to keep an eye on the development of this extension called Objection - I haven't seen a version updated for 1.5 anywhere yet.

Objection 2.0

Regards
eyes-open