Skip to main content

Lawsuit targets 'Net giants over "zombie" cookies

posted onJuly 28, 2010
by hitbsecnews

A wide swath of the net's top websites, including MTV, ESPN, MySpace, Hulu, ABC, NBC and Scribd, were sued in federal court Friday on the grounds they violated federal computer intrusion law by secretly using storage in Adobe's Flash player to recreate cookies deleted by users.

At issue is technology from Quantcast, also targeted in the lawsuit. Quantcast created Flash cookies that track users across the web, and used them to recreate traditional browser cookies that users deleted from their computers. These “zombie” cookies came to light last year, after researchers at UC Berkeley documented deleted browser cookies returning to life. Quantcast quickly fixed the issue, calling it an unintended consequence of trying to measure web traffic accurately.

Flash cookies are used by many of the net's top websites for a variety of purposes, from setting default volume levels on video players to assigning a unique ID to users that tracks them no matter what browser they use. (Disclosure: The last time we reported on this issue, we found that Wired.com used one to set video preferences.)

Source

Tags

Law and Order

You May Also Like

Recent News

Friday, November 29th

Tuesday, November 19th

Friday, November 8th

Friday, November 1st

Tuesday, July 9th

Wednesday, July 3rd

Friday, June 28th

Thursday, June 27th

Thursday, June 13th

Wednesday, June 12th

Tuesday, June 11th

Simplenews subscription

Stay informed - subscribe to our newsletter.
The subscriber's email address.
Keeping Knowledge Free for Over a Decade

Copyright © 2018 Hack In The Box. All rights reserved.

36th Floor, Menara Maxis, Kuala Lumpur City Centre 50088 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Tel: +603-2615-7299 Fax: +603-2615-0088