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Are flash cookies a security risk?
Flash cookies, do you know about them? You know about regular cookies or at least you should by now. They been a topic of concern for years. A cookie is just a piece of data stored on your hard drive in a defined location. Windows lets you control the use of regular cookies and even what cookies you choose to accept. For the most part these cookies are easy to get rid of.
What you may not know is there are things called "Flash Cookies" which are stored on your hard drive in a different location from regular cookies. Are flash cookies dangerous? I'll let you decide for yourself but I feel they can be very dangerous.
You see, flash cookies can hold a lot more information than a regular cookie, a whole lot more. They also exhibit a nasty behavior of rewriting regular cookies that you think you deleted. Now isn't that just wonderful, you delete something from your hard drive and someone decides you didn't really want to delete that cookie so they do you a favor and rewrite the cookie you mistakenly deleted to begin with.
Now I don't know about you but when I delete something I do it consciously and with the sole express purpose of getting it off of my computer. I'm not stupid and I resent the companies that treat me as if I am. Trying to spin the switch from invading my privacy to doing me a big favor. That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
Yet another company caught doing the same thing said "What's the big deal, everyone's doing it?" Shades of Richard Nixon. Surely no corporate executive would say something like that. Lol, you highly underestimate the stupidity of corporate executives.
Bottom line, to me, flash cookies are a hugh problem and a violation of my privacy. I don't care how they try to spin it, they aren't altruistic and they sure aren't doing it for our own good. They do it for one reason. Money.
To get rid of these cookies I use CCleaner. You'll have to add the directory to the list to be done but it's as simple as browsing to the correct directory and adding it by selecting it and telling it to add it. Couldn't be much simpler.
CCleaner does lots of other good things for your computer too. If you've never used it before you'll be surprised how fast your computer runs. You can get CCleaner at This link. Don't worry, CCleaner is a free tool and it does a very good job. About halfway down this page are the instructions how to add the proper directory to get rid of the flash cookies.
If you want to learn more about the subject and whether it's as safe as the companies using it say it is or whether you agree with me and others who think it's a very bad thing for security and privacy.
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Spyware and Adware is software made by publishers that allow them to snoop on your browsing activity, invade your privacy, and flood you with those horrible popups. If you are like most users on the internet, chances are you are probably infected with these applications. Checkout the free anti spyware download and run it on your computer. I'm betting you'll be really surprised at how much it finds.
Free Spyware Scan
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