Flash Player privacy features may cause headaches
Features intended to provide better privacy for users of the upcoming Adobe Flash Player 10.1 may end up being a hindrance for online merchants and banks that drop Flash cookies onto a user's computer to identify returning customers.
Ori Eisen, chief innovation officer at fraud detection vendor 41st Parameter, notes that both Flash cookies and regular cookies have been used for customer identification and tracking by Web merchants and banks for years. Adobe Flash Player 10.1, which Adobe plans to ship by midyear, will include support for the private browsing feature found today in many Web browsers. That's good for users, but the prospect of losing Flash cookies could pose problems for businesses online that use the technology to identify and track visitors, Eisen says.
The new private browsing support, when activated by the user in Flash Player 10.1, means that merchants and banks won't be able to lean on Flash cookies in the future for identifying customers.
