Stop Websites from Tracking You

Ever wondered how Google, Yahoo or some other site knew who you were even though you deleted the temp files and cleared cookied ? Yes, cookies were cleared when you cleaned it in your browser, how else could they know ?

There is a kind of Super Cookie that most people dont know about. LSO (Local Shared Objects) is a cookie-like collection of data stored on your computer and are made by all version of Adobe Flash Player & MX Player. Websites and advertisers are known to use LSO to track users.

LSO’s don’t ask the users permission to store the data on the computer in system folder. Since the data is stored in the system folder, they are protected from deletion. Each LSO offers 100KB of data to be stored compared to 4KB offered via cookies. They can also send information to their servers without the users knowledge.

If you want to protect yourself and not be tracked by advertisers, get the BetterPrivacy Addon for Firefox. It automatically deletes, all the LSO while exiting the browsers.

Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of ‘Super-Cookie’, which silently conquered the internet. This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them – since browsers are unable to do that for you.

Download BetterPrivacy

Alfred

Alfred is a Pilot & Tech blogger from India. Currently he is pursuing a career in aviation.

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15 Comments

February 5, 2010 at 3:43 am

Alfred

Thanks Vijay, ever since I stopped social commenting on other blogs, you are the only consistent commentor on our blog
February 4, 2010 at 10:35 am

Vijay

Alrite.. I sure hope this extension did the trick..
I like ur posts.. keep posting more great stuff..
My laptop and my mobile phone are both very grateful to u!
February 3, 2010 at 11:54 pm

Alfred

As said in the post Vijay, advertisment companies know that browser cache gets cleared once in a while and that you can clear it yourself. To avoid this they use cookies used by flash players. These super cookies are not deleted by the browser. Infact they are never deleted unless you use a specific extension like this one or Ccleaner.
February 3, 2010 at 11:47 pm

Vijay

Thank you, I got the extension and apparently Chrome updated itself wen i wasnt looking..

but I dont see how this is different from me clearing the private data myself using the options in the browser..
February 3, 2010 at 3:12 am

Alfred

I think this extension should do the trick.

http://www.hotcleaner.com/clickclean_chrome.html

As you should know, the stable version of Chrome does not support extensions by default, you have to download the beta or dev version to use extensions.

I use the beta version and there are no problems.
February 2, 2010 at 9:54 am

Vijay

Its a nice add on.. do u reckon there is a addon/widget for Google chrome that does the same job?
N is it true that Chrome has privacy issues?
August 27, 2009 at 11:26 am

Crazy blogger

thanks for sharing this firefox addon
August 20, 2009 at 4:19 am

Jim - 406 not acceptable

Never knew about these little blighters, I would presume using Firefox’s privacy mode would stop them from being saved? Shocking how they can store more information than a cookie too…
August 20, 2009 at 12:28 am

Digg the Art

nothing to do because its useless and true that Google sell our specially search history to advertisers and we cant do any thing
.-= Digg the Art´s last blog ..Cool Funny Art =-.
August 18, 2009 at 1:24 am

Consumer Mailing Lists

Thanks for this information, I will definitely have to try this add on.
.-= Consumer Mailing Lists´s last blog ..International 8/17/09—Industrial action at Royal Mail continues this week =-.
August 6, 2009 at 4:40 pm

web hosting

interesting post and quite informative also for readers
August 5, 2009 at 1:38 am

Micha

Thanks for the cool tip.
August 3, 2009 at 5:22 pm

digital megapixel

nice post, thank you for your share.
.-= digital megapixel´s last blog ..Microwaves From Ge =-.
July 31, 2009 at 7:00 am

computer wizard

this is why i love firefox itz addons add lot of features … thanks for your post
July 31, 2009 at 6:58 am

computer wizard

this is why i love firefox itz addons add lot of features … thanks for your post
.-= computer wizard´s last blog ..Latest Tech News and Information =-.

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