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WSJ Warnings About Cookies Carry Cookies 45

itwbennett writes "The Wall Street Journal has 'a pretty useful section tracking privacy issues, privacy protection tools and the threats thereof from online marketers, from the point of view and on the technical level of a relatively savvy consumer,' says blogger Kevin Fogarty. The downside: He discovered that reading two stories from the WSJ's privacy section left behind deletion-resistant Flash cookies."

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WSJ Warnings About Cookies Carry Cookies

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  • Trojan? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DamonHD ( 794830 ) <d@hd.org> on Monday November 15, 2010 @08:46AM (#34230066) Homepage

    Does that count as a Trojan article?

    Rgds

    Damon

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by tttonyyy ( 726776 )

      Does that count as a Trojan article?

      Ironic, for our pleasure.

      Those cookie crumbs sure do itch though.

      • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

        Come on, anyone knows an article like this is half-baked; it's all about the dough, and only chips away at the real issues. I want to see the subject served up on a platter, freshly prepared and ready for immediate consumption, before I'll endorse a crumby thing like this.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Yo dawg, we heard you like cookies...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ZeRu ( 1486391 )
      This site stores your viewing preferences in cookies. It is possible to opt out of this in your settings. However, that information will be stored in a cookie.
      Do you still wish to opt out?
      • It is possible to opt out of this in your settings. However, that information will be stored in a cookie.

        How else would the site remember that you’d asked to opt-out of its tracking cookies upon your next visit?

        The important question is... is the flash cookie user-unique?

  • by smitty777 ( 1612557 ) on Monday November 15, 2010 @08:54AM (#34230138) Journal

    It's a good thing it wasn't an article on syphylis

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Bullocks I can see it is really easy to get rid of flash cookies.
    If you cannot access the .sol files with a Windows SWF install then try in Linux. The cookies are set in a .macromedia folder created in the specific user /home directory and do not require root to remove. I guess if you run Windows then you might be .sol but my guess is that if you set up users in windows correctly then there should be no trouble "chucking your cookies"...Something I frequently do when using Windows. It is not that hard if yo

    • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      Bullocks I can see it is really easy to get rid of flash cookies. If you cannot access the .sol files with a Windows SWF install then try in Linux.....

      Yes that's going to be really easy for the majority of Windows users!

  • by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday November 15, 2010 @09:00AM (#34230176) Homepage

    "Threats of online marketers."

    Online marketing is a threat. We all need to acknowledge this and accept it. It is a threat to our privacy and to ourselves if and when that information is sold (because there are few if any laws against it) for purposes other than marketing. The problem starts with aggressive marketing. It needs to stop. They will not willingly respect us. They have to be forced to do so. They will not change their ways out of guilt or shame -- they have none. Let it settle into your brain and then act accordingly.

    • It's a threat to your privacy to use the unencrypted un-anonymous web.
      Even use of TOR doesn't guarantee your "privacy".

      Let's all sit around in a group and read news paper articles.
      If you want to read a section, just ask someone sitting next to you to pass it along.

      Now, let's try to provide the news paper, room and chairs for free... Guess what happens: Advertising.
      Guess what makes more money? Targeted Advertising. Guess who knows that you want the sports section? That fella sitting next to you who passes

  • police thyself (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Monday November 15, 2010 @09:12AM (#34230282)
    "The central issue in writing federal privacy legislation is whether the Internet industry's efforts to police its own behavior has been effective enough."

    Apparently they can't even recognize their own behavior, let alone police themselves.
    • Well, the article-writing investigatory department and the advertising department and the IT department are all separate entities. I doubt that Emily Steel, Nick Wingfield and Julia Angwin (looking at some bylines here) have any real power to "police" the rest of the WSJ organization.

      FWIW they did include their own site in the study's infographic, at least.

  • now i want a cookie....
  • Flash cookies are easily deleted using Adobe's Settings Manager. [macromedia.com]
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Flash cookies are easily deleted using Adobe's Settings Manager. [macromedia.com]

      Yes, having to go to an Adobe web page to delete files from your local machine makes perfect sense.

      Personally I just configured Apparmor so Flash can't write to anything but /tmp and its local config files, and no longer have to worry about whatever stupid crap Adobe do.

    • It doesn't get much easier than rm -rf ~/.macromedia
      • There are no less than 3 sets of information (alright, "cookies") stored by flash on linux, two bfolders in .macromedia and another folder in .adobe. You must delete all 3 (as well as the folders themselves if you want to clear directory entries). .
  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday November 15, 2010 @09:36AM (#34230520)
    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In addition to Better Privacy, you can also change your flash plug-in settings to disallow LSO's using the flash applet at Macromedia [macromedia.com].

  • the Department of Redundancy Department.

  • Savior of the Universe
    Flash
    He save everyone of us
    Flash
    He's a miracle
    Flash
    King of the impossible

  • If they had been named turds, rather than cookies, people might use and accept them a little less casually. From now on that's how I'm referring to them.

  • I'm just trying to figure out why this would fall into the Idle category? I thought Idle was supposed to be for *completely* useless, completely *offtopic* stuff which wouldn't fit anywhere else on slashdot?

    Information about WSJ articles on privacy and cookies seems pretty on-topic compared to most of the stuff in Idle.

    • I'm just trying to figure out why this would fall into the Idle category?

      I would guess because it's completely useless. It's the equivalent of someone high on weed (or Alanis Morrisette) making an "insightful" comment about irony. Next Week: online journal publishes article about the potential dangers of the internet on the internet!!!!!!!

  • Cookies!!!!!!
  • ... you should know that , just in case you are in a hurry to disable local storage in flash.

    Are you going to disable it now?

    ... I thought so.

Avoid strange women and temporary variables.

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