Private browsing

[viking60]

[dedanna1029]

Sometimes, I find the manual to be not in agreement with how the command is currently working,

Yup, I see a lot of the same here. It happened a lot in Unix class even, as well as having had it happen in Linux a lot.

[viking60]

Some info for our Windows friends:
The flashcookies are stored in:
C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia (Windows 7)
If you are dualbooting Linux and Windows you can make a cronjob like this:

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*/30 * * * * rm -R -f /media/win/Users/<USER>/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia

That works just fine. I am not sure if windows has it's own tools (FireFox has the better privacy addon) to deal with them - but Linux can!
If you trust Adobe to control this you can go to their website and alter the behavior of Flash-cookies:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/docum ... ger03.html
That seems to work, but I dunno for how long... (updating seems to reset it)

[viking60]

If you want to remove flash cookies manually it makes sense to make an alias:

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alias removeflash='rm -R  ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/'

As we have established this will work in Arch and Manjaro but if you are using Mandriva and other distros that have altered the traditionmal rm command to rm -i you will have to force it like this:

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[code]alias removeflash='rm -R -f  ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/'[/code]

Now I have called it removeflash - you can call it remove_flash_cookies or rf or whatever you like.

So every time I write the command removeflash those persistent cookies are removed.

[Snorkasaurus]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120216 Firefox/10.0.2 SeaMonkey/2.7.2

I'd like to offer a "thumbs up" for that UA string! :-)

S.

[Snorkasaurus]

Do Not Track Plus 2.0.6 May be incompatible with Firefox 2.7.2; Not available for Firefox 2.7.2

Well, I am running Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120216 Firefox/10.0.2 SeaMonkey/2.7.2 which is the built-in string, crafted to help stupid websites display when only 'Firefox' is understood, iiuc. The Do Not Track Plus add-on from albine refuses to install. I already have 'add-on compatibility checking' disabled but it is not helping for this. The demo seems like it might be a handy add-on. The License Agreement is brief, a good thing! I have read where part of unwilling plugins can be edited to override the browser/version check but, maybe later.

Good heads-up, nonetheless!

Hey rolf,

When running older versions of FireFox (or better yet, if you're running SeaMonkey) you can sometimes download the .XPI file of a plugin, extract it (they are just renamed .ZIP files) and edit the install.rdf file to modify the version compatibility listings. Then just save the .RDF file back in to the zip and rename it back to .XPI to install it. Doesn't always work (like with Lightning) but it sometimes gets you what you are looking for.

HF,
S.

[viking60]

The EFF has a lot of credibility in terms of protecting your privacy. Now they have developed the privacy badger.
It is an alpha and it is not an Add blocker.
It analyzes cookies and blocks third party involvement that has nothing to do with your surfing. I installed it on chromium directly from the site.

Let us help the EFF to further develop this one:

[Snorkasaurus]

Now they have developed the privacy badger.

I was able to get it installed in to SeaMonkey by modifying the install.rdf file but there does not seem to be a way to interact with it. Hopefully they'll add SeaMonkey to the list of supported browsers (and hopefully it will work back to v2.8). :-)

S.

[viking60]

My removeflash alias is part of my normal computing - every time I have watched some flash I go to the terminal and type

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removeflash

and those spying flashcookies with sol extension are gone.

Just to make sure I wanted to check that those files were not hiding anywhere else on my system I did a:

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locate "*.sol"

...and Discovered that any media site I have visited + a lot of other sites were monitoring me despite my strict cookie settings and Privacy Badger and Addblock....

I was tracked like never before and the sinner was Chromium's or Chrome's pepper flash.

Not only does it put the Flash cookies in a different location, the have made names with spaces in the path to make it hard to automatically remove them.
The path for Chrome and Chromium spying flash cookies is:

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~/.config/chromium/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/

This is not easily put into an alias because omitting the words with spaces will destroy the regular omiting :
so
Won't work!!

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alias removepepper='rm -R -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/"Pepper Data"/"Shockwave?Flash"/'


Won't work!

But as I found out during our backup script process a ? will do nicely to fill in the spaces so
this will work:

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alias removepepper='rm -R -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/Pepper?Data/Shockwave?Flash/'


So now I have two working "get rid of flash cookies" aliases:
removeflash

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removeflash='rm -R -f ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/

To remove all other flashcookies and the one above to take care of Chromes flashcookies. I am to lazy to keep track of that so I combined them together in removeflash

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removeflash='rm -R -f ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/; removepepper;'

So now ALL flashcookes are getting destroyd again everytime I type

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removeflash

The directories that are deleted here will be auto re-created the moment you go to a site and watch a video or whatever - so it will not affect the functionality of your browser.
You can play flash games and watch videos as much as you like.

Once you remove the cookies by typing removeflash those persistant cookies are gone. And I promise you: every "newspaper" you visit on the internet uses them
And none of them are informing you upfront that they are placing Flash cookies on your computer.
So it makes a lot of sense.

If you are on level 10 in that flash game - you will be back to level 1 though

There are two easy steps you need to take to make this work.
1 Create the removepepper alias:

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alias removepepper='rm -R -f ~/.config/chromium/Default/Pepper?Data/Shockwave?Flash/'


2 Edit the removeflash alias so it looks like this

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removeflash='rm -R -f ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/; removepepper;'

Many put their aliases in .bashrc I keep them in a separate .alias file.

Deleting the flash-cookies will allow your normal cookies to stay so that you can be still auto-logged in here

Surfing in incognito mode (chromium --incognito) should automatically delete these cookies after use.
From Googles Privacy & Terms:

Another feature of Chrome is its incognito mode. You can browse in incognito mode when you don’t want your website visits or downloads to be recorded in your browsing and download histories. Any cookies created while in incognito mode are deleted after you close all incognito windows.

Edit:
After repeated tests the cookies are removed when surfing in incognito mode. If you have one regular instance of Chromium open and one incognito instance then the flash cookies were not removed.
The incognito mode did not create any cookies and did not leave any by itself - and it left the flash-cookies from the regular browsing.

So the incognito mode works - but it will not remove existing flash cookies made by Chromium in "normal" mode - You still will have to remove them.

PS:
Even if you do not use the Chromium/Chrome browser today; it makes sense to alter your alias as described above in case you will install it some time in the future.

Flash cookies or Super cookies are a real risk and they can revive "Zombie cookies" - aka regular cookies you thought you had removed with all those fancy plugins - No matter how well that is done; the Super cookies can bring them back....mocking your privacy settings and preferences.

[Snorkasaurus]

How to accomplish the same in Windows... create a cleanflash.bat file like so

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cd %appdata%
del /s "Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\*.sol"
for /d /r %%s in ("Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\#*") do rmdir /s /q "%%s"

The first delete line kills individual shared objects, while the second one kills any settings that were saved on a per-site basis. It will leave behind

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%appdata%\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\settings.sol

which is your system-wide flash settings. I would suggest leaving this file alone and setting your global preferences to not allow access to your camera and mic, set your storage permissions to zero, etc. Schedule this to run at logon, logoff, every ten minutes or just run it manually if you like. :-)

S.

[viking60]

Great tip !
I moved your post to private browsing from finding any file anywhere
Is it the same location for pepper flash?

[viking60]

Puh I found the Pepper flash location on Windows XP - they really do not want you to find those cookies
Many of the folders in this path are hidden so you will not see them in explorer but you can enter them and you will get there.
Here is how the path looks on a Norwegian system:

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C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Lokale innstillinger\Programdata\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\WritableRoot\#SharedObjects\98NYSVV5

Lokale innstillinger is hidden so I just had to enter it in english systems it would be Local settings
The english version would look like this:

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C:\Documents and Settings/<USER>/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Chrome/User Data/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/WritableRoot/#SharedObjects/

(can you confirm this Snork?)
What I did to find the settings was to play a flashgame in Chrome and then search for *.sol with the Windows search function. Nothing turned up so I had to expand the search to also check hidden folders (not default) and there the entire enchilada turned up.


All folders in

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C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Lokale innstillinger\Programdata\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\WritableRoot\#SharedObjects\

will be deleted here - for sure

Checking the paths in Windows 7.....
The path is the same in Windows 7

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C:\Documents and Settings/<USER>/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Chrome/User Data/Default/Pepper Data/Shockwave Flash/WritableRoot/#SharedObjects/