Everyone knows what a browser cookie is – it is a small file stored inside the browser cache containing some website specific information. For example, many of the websites store cookies in your web browser to set your logged in status, so that you do not have to enter your credentials over and over again. But Flash cookies are different from ordinary cookies due to their never expiring nature. The Flash cookies (also called LSO cookies) are data packets stored on your computer through Adobe Flash Player. These LSO cookies have no expiration date set like the ordinary cookies and therefore pose privacy risk to end user.
Fortunately, if you are a Firefox user, then you can manage such Flash cookies easily using the BetterPrivacy extension. This browser extension allows you to remove all the LSO cookies from your computer without having to go through the painful Adobe Flash Player interface on the Adobe website.
After the installation of the BetterPrivacy extension in Firefox, you can launch it from the Tools → Better Privacy from the menubar or clicking on its icon in the Firefox toolbar. This will show the BetterPrivacy window where you can see a list of all the LSO cookies stored on your computer. All of these cookies are stored in a single folder no matter which web browser you used to visit cookie storing websites.
You can select one or more of these Flash cookies and delete them as you please. But a word of caution – do not remove any cookies for the online games that you have been playing or you may end up losing game related data like your progress, levels, scores etc.
Under the Options tab, you can control how BetterPrivacy is going to handle these Flash cookies. You can choose to automatically delete these cookies at Firefox exit, start or after some time interval. You can also disable click pinging, which is often used by websites to track a user’s web activity.
Conclusion: Most of the web browsers do not handle the Flash cookies, but you can use BetterPrivacy to manage the Flash cookies stored in your computer easily. Through BetterPrivacy, you can quickly delete all the Flash cookies instantly.
You can get BetterPrivacy extension for Firefox from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/.