Things I didn't know #536: Flash keeps cookies

If you follow this link, you’ll see a control panel (you can also get to it by right-clicking on the Flash player (when you’re visiting a site with a Flash component) and selecting “Settings…”). You will likely be surprised at how many sites are listed there, and you may be somewhat alarmed to find them there at all (as I was) if you have instructed your browser to clear cookies on close, or you otherwise remove persistent tracking information. This site information is, in every way that matters, a persistent cookie. I discovered this cache of data after wondering how it was that Pandora knew who I was after I cleared all offline data. Adobe doesn’t exactly hide it (and once you’re on the page where you can make the adjustments, there’s a decent explanation of what they mean), but they sure don’t make it easy to find, and they absolutely don’t do what I would consider the right thing; i.e., to respect my browser’s privacy settings and delete site-specific data per my instructions. There’s another page in the settings manager where you can deny any or all sites permission to save information, but Pandora (at least) refuses to operate without the ability to save data on my machine, so the only way I’ve found to keep my machine clear of Flash-based tracking cookies is to manually clear them using the control panel (which I have bookmarked for convenient access).