Changing Flash Defaults Online

Regarding this Wired.com post on Flash cookies, I decided to go to Adobe's crazy-ass settings page and set me some defaults. [Here] is the URL, and this is what it should look like:


I took screenshots of each tab as I went through, and have highlighted which options I chose.

Tab 1:
I chose "Always Deny" to prevent any site from accessing my microphone or camera. I don't have a camera on this computer, but 1) I am really sick of the little pop up, and 2) WTF don't record me or my ambient noise!

Tab 2:
I changed the amount of disk space websites can use for cookies or preloading or whatever to 0, from 100k. I changed the box to "Never Ask Again", and unchecked the "Allow third-party Flash Content to store data on your computer" box. I left the "common Flash components" box alone, because I do watch videos fairly frequently, and while I'd like to see what these common Flash components are, I think I'll be ok.

Tab 3:
There is a very excellent reason why I upgrade Firefox and its add-ons: security. So no, no one gets to access my system in a way that has been deemed insecure.

Tab 4:
From my global default in Tab 1 of "NO" to accessing the camera/microphone, the "Always ask/allow/deny" options have been blanked out. There was a list of websites that had come up and I denied access to manually before this, so I deleted them. A lot of them were random news sites, myspace and blogs. Weird.

Tab 5:
From my global defaults of "None" and "Never Ask Again" in Tab 2, those areas have been blanked out here. Again I chose to delete all sites that I had previously denied access to.

So now I feel a little more confident in the future of my internet browsing. The only thing that may have me running back here is Hulu - if I can't watch my House, I'll come back here and Find A Way, even if it means changing all my Tab 2 defaults back to OK, and having to deny everything else on the internet manually.

Now that's an idea for a feature request - Allow me to tell Adobe "only let these sites store data on my computer" and deny all others by default.

I do recommend checking out the Wired.com article to learn more about Flash Cookies, and also how to delete them off several different operating systems (look for the "Tools" section near the bottom of the article). I'm about to do that right now, and then see which of my friends would like a bit more internet privacy, too :)