Flash player

Flash is widely used as a mechanism for animation on websites, and also for video streaming via web sites - probably the most well known example of this being YouTube.

However there are some things to be aware of, when installing the Flash player on a computer - there maybe more, but these are three that I have come across so far.

Controlling a webcam and microphone

The Flash player can take over control of a webcam and a microphone connected to the same computer. Depending on settings within the Flash player, websites can switch on a webcam and a microphone, without neccessarily providing any information to the computer user that this has happened.

If you install Flash yourself, by default, the Flash player will ask permission before switching them on. However if a computer arrives with the Flash player already installed, then the possibility exists that this default configuration has been changed.

I would also think it to be quite likely that unscrupulous websites can alter these settings without the users knowledge, as the Flash player can be remotely configured. More on this further down the page.

Flash cookies

The Flash player sets up a foundation for Flash cookies - more correctly, these are called Local Shared Objects. They can be used by Flash objects to store data - this can include user specific data such as the setting of a volume control. So in this respect they can be useful.

Unfortunately they can also store other user data which has got little to do with the function of the Flash object.

Flash cookies are somewhat like normal cookies that many websites place on a user`s computer - except that -

they can contain a lot more information than a normal cookie
the browser knows nothing about them, as their use is part of the Flash object, and not done through normal HTML which the browser would understand
deleting cookies through the browser will not delete Flash cookies
they can have an unlimited life
a website can use the information in Flash cookies to rebuild normal cookies that have been deleted

Despite the claims of many emotive websites that you can`t ever get rid of them, Flash cookies are just files, and like any other files, they can be manually deleted, if you know where they are. The Flash cookies themselves are .sol files, and these live inside folders that are named after the website that created them.

I don`t know why, but they are listed twice, in a number of nested folders inside two folders called -

#SharedObjects
macromedia.com

These two folders are located as follows :-

in SuSe linux they are in /home/<USERNAME>/.macromedia/Flash_Player/ - other versions of Linux may be the same
in Windows XP they are in C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player
in Windows 7 they are in C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player - I think this path also applies to Vista

You will probably have to enable the viewing of hidden files in all these operating systems. Note that in all these, the location is user specific, so a computer with multiple users may have multiple sets of Flash cookies.

There is quite a lot of folder nesting inside these two folders, so just drill down through all the folders until you come to the website named folders.

Many of the website names will not be recognisable, but you may find one or two surprising ones - even for some websites that don`t appear to use Flash at all.

To get rid of them, just delete all the website named folders and all their contents from both lists.

Configuring the Flash player

It would be nice if the Flash player installed on a computer could be configured locally by the user. So far I haven`t seen any way to do this. However it can be configured via the internet.

Any one of the following URL`s will take you a web page containing a web based tool with which you can configure the Flash player. The different URL`s just take you to the different tabs on the same tool, so you can just use any one of them, and then use the tabs to select the different settings.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

The tool isn`t the most user friendly tool you will ever meet, there is no "Click to apply" button, and no feedback to say it has done anything. But if you change a setting, it just quietly goes off and does it when the tool is closed.

The settings are not the easiest to understand either, but in essence -

use the first URL to set access to the webcam and microphone
use the second URL to set the amount of storage space a Flash cookie can use - you can`t stop a Flask cookie being set up, but by allocating zero space, the cookie cannot store any information - also untick the box entitled "Allow third-party Flash content to store data on you computer"
use the third URL to select the "Always deny" radio button
use the fourth URL to select your chosen option to allow or deny websites that you have already visited access to the webcam and microphone - you can also use this screen to delete any or all of the Flash cookies already on the computer
use the fifth URL to set the allocation of storage space for websites already visited and that already have Flash cookies on the computer - you can also use this screen to delete any or all of the Flash cookies already on the computer

The different settings are not very intuitive, but between them it means you can set different configurations for different websites. So you could if you wanted have automatic access to the webcam and microphone to some named web sites, but not to all the others.

Or set up different allocations of Flash cookie storage space to some specific websites.

The number of tabs you get on the tool varies with different operating systems and different generations of flash. On my Linux machines, I get five tabs, corresponding to the five URL`s above. On a Windows XP machine, I get eight tabs - the other URL`s are -

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager08.html
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager09.html

Internet Explorer and the Flash player

Adobe produce a version of the Flash player specifically for Internet Explorer running on MS Windows. This version uses ActiveX, so alarm bells should ring.

ActiveX is a Microsoft technology designed specifically for the Windows/Internet Explorer environment which allows control of parts of the operating system. It was intended to allow websites a way to enhance the user browsing experience.

However the downside is that it gives the Flash object developer a bit too much power to do nasty things to your Windows.

If you want to use Flash on Windows, it might be better to use another browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari, and download the non-ActiveX version.

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