LSO - Flash - and the people who love it.

I was following up on some info that Slapped has been floating my way. Through a series of articles linking to articles linking to even more articles, I found this one.

People might want to take a look at that article. Don't stop when you hit that first big advertisement in the middle. That's not the end of the material. Scroll past the ad and read the rest.

You may find it illuminating in a way that is almost plainly worded.

[aspkin]

The article makes it sound like a bad thing that consumers are trying to protect their identity by removing flash objects.

[slapped]

Originally Posted by aspkin

The article makes it sound like a bad thing that consumers are trying to protect their identity by removing flash objects.

Sure it does, take a Look at who they work for.

I know from some of your posts here that you "Dabble" in the Market a bit.

Take a peek at some Past Market Financial Press releases from Ebay, Amazon, Chase, Bank of America, ect, ect you will see this Company (Scout Analytics)
Mentioned from time to time.

Yes, it does. But it seems that is exactly how sites view users. We are their toys, and when we choose not to let them play with us any which way they choose, we become the bad guy from their point of view.

I, on the other hand, see it opposite to them. I figure that if they want my participation, they should be subservient to me and my desires. I am not there to serve them. I use sites and services in a way that suits me. I don't serve to suit them.

The following excerpt is from HERE.Credit for the information goes to Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Persistent Identification Element ("PIE")
United Virtualities (UV), an online marketing firm, has introduced a tracking platform that takes advantage of the relative obscurity of Flash cookies. In a press release this March, UV announced PIE, a backup ID system for cookies. Mookie Tenembaum, founder of United Virtualities, explained the reasoning behind the product, "All advertisers, websites and networks use cookies for targeted advertising, but cookies are under attack. According to current research they are being erased by 40% of users creating serious problems."
UV's press release also claims that the PIE system can restore deleted web cookies. Although there is little official information on the implementation of the PIE system, it is not likely that the cookie is actually restored. Instead, it appears that the Flash cookie acts as a redundancy. That is, the PIE system uses Flash cookies as a backup. A site interested in tracking a user would set a normal cookie and a Flash cookie. If the user erased the normal cookie, the PIE-enabled site could use the redundant Flash cookie to track the user.
To justify this tracking mechanism, UV's Tenembaum said, "The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works."
This practice is highly deceptive. By deleting cookies, consumers are clearly rejecting attempts to track them. Using an obscure technology to subvert these wishes is a practice that should be stopped. Cookies have many beneficial purposes and can make the end user's web experience better. Websites should be honest and up front about how they use cookies, and they should respect the decisions of those users who do not want to be tracked via cookies.

Similar but more serious (in my opinion) is DOM. Following, I provide you with some information which I gleaned from Microsoft.

[begin]
DOM Storage is often compared to HTTP cookies. Like cookies, Web developers can store per-session or domain-specific data as name/value pairs on the client using DOM Storage. However, unlike cookies, DOM Storage makes it easier to control how information stored by one window is visible to another.
For example, a user might open two browser windows to buy airline tickets for two different flights. However, if the airline's Web application uses cookies to store its session state, information could "leak" from one transaction into the other, potentially causing the user to buy two tickets for the same flight without noticing. As applications become more capable of offline behaviors, such as storing values locally for later return to the server, the potential for this sort of information "leak" becomes more prevalent.
DOM Storage also offers significantly more disk space than cookies. In Internet Explorer, cookies can store only 4 kilobytes (KB) of data. This byte total can be one name/value pair of 4 KB, or it can be up to 20 name/value pairs that have a total size of 4 KB. By comparison, DOM Storage provides roughly 10 megabytes (MB) for each storage area.
Functionally, client storage areas are quite different from cookies. DOM Storage doesn't transmit values to the server with every request as cookies do, nor does the data in a local storage area ever expire. And unlike cookies, it is easy to access individual pieces of data using a standard interface that has growing support among browser vendors.

The local storage mechanism spans multiple windows and persists beyond the current session. The localStorage attribute provides persistent storage areas for domains. It allows Web applications to store nearly 10 MB of user data, such as entire documents or a user's mailbox, on the client for performance reasons.

Each domain and subdomain has its own separate local storage area. Domains can access the storage areas of subdomains, and subdomains can access the storage areas of parent domains.

The data stored in local storage is much more public than that stored in cookies, which can be limited to a certain path within a domain. Even picking a hard-to-guess key won't provide any privacy because the Storage object provides a way to enumerate them.
[end]

[slapped]

Nice going Vic, Here is some More potentially Bad news: IP GEO-Location
Want to Know your REAL IP Address AND LOCATION Check this site :About.com: http://www.ip2location.com/

Pay Attention to the LATIDUDE AND LONGITUDE Right down to A 10,000th of a degree

Yup. Pretty intrusive stuff. Lucky for me, my modem allows me to place myself elsewhere. When I clicked your link from my subscribed modem, it pinned me down. When I used my enhanced modem, it put me about 20 miles away (which is exactly what I intended).

[aspkin]

Originally Posted by Vicvelcro

The following excerpt is from HERE.Credit for the information goes to Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Persistent Identification Element ("PIE")
United Virtualities (UV), an online marketing firm, has introduced a tracking platform that takes advantage of the relative obscurity of Flash cookies. In a press release this March, UV announced PIE, a backup ID system for cookies. Mookie Tenembaum, founder of United Virtualities, explained the reasoning behind the product, "All advertisers, websites and networks use cookies for targeted advertising, but cookies are under attack. According to current research they are being erased by 40% of users creating serious problems."
UV's press release also claims that the PIE system can restore deleted web cookies. Although there is little official information on the implementation of the PIE system, it is not likely that the cookie is actually restored. Instead, it appears that the Flash cookie acts as a redundancy. That is, the PIE system uses Flash cookies as a backup. A site interested in tracking a user would set a normal cookie and a Flash cookie. If the user erased the normal cookie, the PIE-enabled site could use the redundant Flash cookie to track the user.
To justify this tracking mechanism, UV's Tenembaum said, "The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works."
This practice is highly deceptive. By deleting cookies, consumers are clearly rejecting attempts to track them. Using an obscure technology to subvert these wishes is a practice that should be stopped. Cookies have many beneficial purposes and can make the end user's web experience better. Websites should be honest and up front about how they use cookies, and they should respect the decisions of those users who do not want to be tracked via cookies.

As an affiliate marketer, I rather partners use flash objects just for this reason. Most users don't really know that much about flash objects and if they did, they don't know how to remove them. On the other hand a lot of people know what a browser cookie is and how they can easily remove them, thus making my affiliate efforts less rewarding. It's just part of the game though and I know that.

I don't mind storage of my sessions in a way that is relevant to me. Save info about my recent product views, fine by me. Show me similar stuff I might be interested in on my next login, that's cool too.

Track my location and use the stored data to identify me when I am trying to be anonymous or use that data to link me to other online personas I use, not fine by me.

I wouldn't want a website to splat me in the face with a paint-ball so it can recognize me again. I don't want a site to brand me with an LSO. It's not like a nightclub where I need a stamp on my hand to get back in after I go out to my car for cigarettes. My password should act like the stamp to get back in, not a phuquing cookie.