Enervation: How to make something new unintelligible
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Banish Flash cookies forever under Linux
LINUX USERS can banish forever Adobe's Flash Player cookies, which can be a good idea because, for one thing, as a plugin Flash doesn't observe web browsers' Private Browsing modes.
Like other kinds of web cookies, you have no idea what these are doing, but it's a fair bet that they might enable inquisitive websites to track your browsing habits. However, you can find and delete these Flash cookies. You can also banish them forever, if you're using Linux.
Open a Terminal window and use the su command to gain superuser access, that is, root user status. If you're running Ubuntu or another Linux distro that follows that philosophy about superuser access, just prefix all of these commands with sudo instead.
To find the Flash Player cookies on your system, use the command find -iname '*.sol' and that should list a bunch of files under the ./.macromedia subdirectory under your /home/userid directory. It is likely that there will be a lot of them.
You'll probably want to delete all of these, but you don't want to break anything so you might want to back them up first. To do that, use the commands mkdir ./.macromedia.sav and cp -a ./.macromedia/* ./.macromedia.sav/.
Then you can delete that directory and all of those Flash Player cookie files by using rm -rf ./.macromedia. Always be careful when using the rm -rf command.
Now, link that directory to /dev/null with ln -s /dev/null ./.macromedia and, if you want, check to see that it worked with ls -al ./.macromedia. That should return ./.macromedia -> /dev/null just like you want.
At this point you can close and reopen your web browser and surf around the web to make sure you can still see Flash content.
In the unlikely event that you want to back this out, you can use mv ./.macromedia.sav ./.macromedia and chown userid:userid ./.macromedia, where userid is your own non-root user ID, to put the Flash Player files back.
When you're satisfied that this hasn't broken Flash, you can use rm -rf ./.macromedia.sav to delete the backup you made earlier.
You can also do the same thing with your ./.adobe/Flash_Player directory, if you have one.
A similar approach might work with Apple's Mac OS X, which is built on top of BSD Unix and thus similar to the Unix-like Linux. And perhaps some Windows users will post MS-DOS commands in the comments. µ
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could someone please describe how to make a symlink to /tmp?
pallgone's link is dead.
1st off, I acknowledge I am a n00b and hasty. Now I am curious how to restore this stuff once you have deleted it. Not the flash files, but the directories, so that flash is no longer "banished".
More and more sites now unfortunately require you allow them, the sites from TV and news for instance, comedychannel(mtvnetworks) for example.
And there are plugins that delete them when you close the browser, which might be an alternative.
Yes, there's a Flash Player for Linux. You can find it at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and if you're running Linux that link will offer to download Adobe Flash Player version 10.1 for Linux.
It gives a choice of YUM for Linux, a tar.gz file, a .rpm file, or either a .deb for debian or APT for Ubuntu 9.04 and above.
I use Mandriva, so I get the .rpm file and simply install it using rpm -ivh.
No problem with HD video on youtube here.
Just been looking at :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q
using Opera/OpenSUSE 11.2
Flash works on linux? Even the full screen HD youtube videos?
Since WHEN??? :o
If you link the .macromedia folder to /dev/null some flash sites don't work anymore, so why not just use the /tmp folder for this?
see my instructions for that on: http://pallgone.blogsite.org/blog/tech#flash
cheers,
pall
May be the better way is not to use flash at all! Well I'm glad there's no 64-bit linux flash support. Although they working for one it's unlikely that it will get on time. This HTML5 thing should make web multimedia a breath and you'll no longer need flash for that.
BTW what is flash is used for except video, a bunch of annoying ad and similar stuff. Yes some sites use flash menus but usually they have html only version. That's why flash is always disabled in my browser until there's reason to be enabled:)
ANYTHING to slam Flash. TYVM!
Hey, big_tool - anything provided by Adobe/Macromedia can be revoked or broken by the same company.
Tools like this aren't really intended to FULLY allow users to circumvent software that they sell.
One of my favorite sites break when I make the folder read-only or link it to /dev/null.
The /tmp suggestion by mario is my solution too, I've also seen adding the delete command to bashrc. If you're not a frequent rebooter, you can add a script to cron.
Or take it even a step further and only surf from a VM ;-)
the mv command will prompt to overwrite the symlink.
you would be correct if the mv command tried to move the contents with mv ./.macromedia.sav/* ./.macromedia rather than rename the entire subdirectory.
@Why su?
you're probably correct. I just tend to work as root because usually I'm not just messing around with my /home directory.
Is there any way to allow some sites? A couple of radio station sites i frequent use a flash player and this seems to have broken it somehow.
em "... as a plugin Flash doesn't observe web browsers' Private Browsing modes." /em
In your defense, that information was likely true when browsers first started adding "Private Browsing" modes, but changed later last year:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2010/01/private_browsing.html
(The real danger in all this is cross-site tracking via third-party web beacons, whether that is stored by browser cookies, Flash Local Storage, browser Local Storage, or IP-address tracking. This article at The Inquirer, for instance, wants to notify DoubleClick, Scorecard Research, Quantserve, AddThis.com, atdmt.com, Google Analytics, Collective Media, Grapeshot, NetShelter, Teracent, Bizographics, CrowdScience, WebTrendsLive and others when visitors arrive. Third-party web beacons are a more significant privacy issue than any particular storage mechanism.)
jd/adobe
Don't you want to rm the symlink before you toss your backup into /dev/null with the mv command?
alias cleanflash='rm -rf ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/* ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*/*'
Works for youtube ok. But mlb.com must be doing something funky with their player system. Get no sound.
...play nice with private browsing?
I'm pretty sure it does now.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/10/flash-player-10-1-download/
If you are deleting files in your own home directory, there is no need for root access! It is dangerous and unnecessary.
Also, if you cd into ~/.macromedia before deleting anything, you have far less chance of doing something awful with rm -rf.
Why use su/sudo thingies, when you stay within your own home directory?
I've made a symlink into /tmp instead. This way flash cookies work for a while, but are cleaned on reboots.
However, one thing I'd like to comment on. There are semantically two kinds of cookies. Privacy invasive are session token. These are not humand-readable and just opaque database handles, most universally used for user tracking and turning people into statistic numbers. But then there are "real" cookies, which follow the original concept. If it's humand-readable and clearly a user-preference, like "fav-background=orange" then there's nothing wrong with cookies. It's just that most developers are too lazy to support real cookies; and corporations are too evil to skip session cookies.
Just a quick hint, there is an equivalent of su for ubuntu (well, there is su, but it's not normally useful unless you've set a root password).
use 'sudo -i' (for 'interactive session) and you effectively get a root session running.
You could get the same effect with 'sudo su' I guess.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
Just copy and paste, THANKS!
For me the bane of computing is cookies.
There is no thing as a good cookie,some are harmless but who know what can be done with the info it stores.
Plus the possible of bad things being stored on your computer make me cringe.
I value my privacy and the main culprit now is flash and it,s 3rd party cookies.
Most people have no idea they are there because there not even stored on your computer.
FLASH PLAYER IS EVIL
I have tried several different Firefox plug-gins and some work better than others. Many sites won't work unless you allow 3rd party cookies.
Just make the folder read only
You could use BleachBit and clean this stuff out along with other unwanted clutter.
Alternatively you could install a Firefox addon like BetterPrivacy which deletes Flash cookies for you after each session, though you can protect ones for sites you trust.