Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

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rhodry
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Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by rhodry »

A REALLY annoying little side effect of using Adobe's flash in browsing is the fact that they silently track your movements via "flash cookies". There are a number of solutions to this including plugins and manual deletions; here is mine:

Add this line to the file ~/.xsessionrc in your home folder - if it does not exist, create it:

for i in ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia ; do ( rm $i/ -rf ; ln -s /dev/null $i ) ; done

Log out and log back in.

Adobe uses the two folders ~/.adobe & ~/.macromedia to do its dirty work. This file runs each time you start an X session . It removes the nasties and then sets these two folders as soft links to redirect to /dev/null.

For those unfamiliar with Linux, /dev/null is the great void, the empty space, into the ether, the abyss, nothingness, call it what you like :) so the Adobe process thinks it is working ok but in fact its output is trundling into oblivion not being saved on your hard drive.

Hope this helps,
rhodry.
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
it's about learning to dance in the rain.
Habitual

Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by Habitual »

straight from http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/v ... Line-Fu%29

commandlinefu.com rocks!
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rivenathos
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Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by rivenathos »

I thought it would be fun to test this out. It works. I also no longer have .adobe or .macromedia folders. They just vanished upon reboot. No problem there, just thought it was worth a mention.

Also, does anyone else notice a slight snappiness to the browser? Maybe it is just me, but it seems to be faster. I have no benchmarks and no way to verify one way or the other. Nothing has exploded, so if anyone wants to experiment, it looks safe enough. ;-)
Current hardware: a Dell OptiPlex 3010 desktop, a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop, and a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop.
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rhodry
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Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by rhodry »

Post by Habitual on Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:27 am
straight from http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/v ... Line-Fu%29

commandlinefu.com rocks!
It sure does! Best RSS feed I have in my list. So many newbies ignore the command line because they want their point & click. What a waste!! Just fills the system with unnecessarily bloated code - when there are literally thousands of simple little solutions out there that need a tiny bit of typing.

I have been using this technique for a LONG time now; can't actually remember where I picked it up - tuxmachines.org probably - but it was its appearance in commandlinefu that prompted me to share it.

Most people probably don't even have a clue what's going on? Certainly Adobe is not going to tell you! :evil:

cheers, and happy new year,
rhodry.
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
it's about learning to dance in the rain.
Habitual

Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by Habitual »

rhodry wrote:
Post by Habitual on Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:27 am
straight from http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/v ... Line-Fu%29

commandlinefu.com rocks!
It sure does! Best RSS feed I have in my list. So many newbies ignore the command line because they want their point & click. What a waste!! Just fills the system with unnecessarily bloated code - when there are literally thousands of simple little solutions out there that need a tiny bit of typing.
...
command-line is King!
No mouse, no problem!
MementoMori

Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by MementoMori »

I've found a small downside. When you do this, you won't be able to use certain services like Pandora radio.
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rivenathos
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Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by rivenathos »

While this little tweak was great, I kept finding small issues which eventually outweighed the benefits. It was really faster, though.
Current hardware: a Dell OptiPlex 3010 desktop, a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop, and a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop.
Current OS: LMDE 3
rhodry
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Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by rhodry »

rivenathos wrote:While this little tweak was great, I kept finding small issues which eventually outweighed the benefits. It was really faster, though.
And that's fine. It may well not be for everyone, like the Pandora radio above. It certainly works for me & my usage so it was shared. YMMV as they say. :)

Personally, I think all things associated with 'flash' are the scourge of the Internet. It is a terribly conceived piece of technology. What REALLY bugs me about this though is that I am tracked without my knowledge or consent. I have no problem whatsoever with Apple & Google etc tracking my net movement; provided I have made an informed decision to allow them to do so!

cheers,
rhodry.
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
it's about learning to dance in the rain.
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linuxviolin
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Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by linuxviolin »

Redirect to /dev/null can bring some problems with some sites. I rather use tmpfs mounts (/dev/shm) to deal with this issue. Some sites don't want to work right if you throw their cookies away as you get them. They want to see them on your drive while you are at their site.

You can also just use an app like BleachBit... :roll:

About the .adobe folder, you should be quite careful. If you have the PDF Reader, Adobe Reader, for instance, you will have some useful folders in .adobe like: Acrobat and Linguistics. Maybe you should not touch to these folders, I guess... :roll: Like said a guy in a comment on the commandlinefu.com web page: "Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0 stops working for me (Ubuntu 10.04 x64) after doing this" :!:

P.S.= Btw, all of this has been already seen, in this forum and elsewhere, everywhere on the web since quite a long time... Why repeat it again and again? Just use a search engine. :roll:
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
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dawgdoc

Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by dawgdoc »

Another option, if you use firefox and are not opposed to using extensions, is to install Better Privacy. I started using it in Windows before finding Mint. It has a number of configuration options. I just set mine to delete all LSOs on Firefox exit. An added benefit when using it in Firefox installed in Windows is that it will also empty the LSOs placed in those folders my any IE users.
DataMan

Re: Hint to stop Adobe flash tracking

Post by DataMan »

++ for dawgdoc's suggestion. Just installed on both my development and production build of Mint 10. Pretty revealing at the number of cookies out of the shoot.

Also tested some flash sites (mine included) post cleanup and everything appears to be working well in the flash arena..

-DataMan
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