Flash Cookie Concerns Flare Up Again

A lawsuit filed in a California court accuses content sharing specialist Clearspring and clients including a Walt Disney subsidiary and Warner Brothers of using Flash cookies to track the actions of children. Clearspring says the suit is 'factually inaccurate' and it does not collect personal information.

The class action suit, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, claims the firm's technology bypasses normal privacy guidelines requiring browsers' consent to be tracked, and has the potential to undo their deletion of normal cookies, switching their tracking 'back on', a recognised feature of Flash cookies.

Regular or HTTP cookies store a person's online activities and identify them as a repeat visitor to web sites or adverts. Flash's 'cookie-like' functions were documented in a study by UC Berkeley last year - its tracking information is not erased when privacy-conscious users clear cookies in the normal way, a loophole previously used by web data firm Quantcast to reinstate other cookies.

The suit claims the companies 'perpetrated this exploit so they could obtain personal identifying information, monitor users, and to sell users' data', knowingly tracking millions of unsuspecting consumers in a way that was not disclosed in their terms of service or privacy policy.

Clearspring, the company responsible for content sharing platform AddThis, has vigorously denied the allegations via its company blog, pointing out that the platform does not use Adobe Flash and is an HTML-centric application. It states: 'We have made an initial review of the lawsuit and found it to be factually inaccurate with respect to the Company's technologies and practices. Most importantly, Clearspring does not and never did collect, store, or sell Personally Identifiable Information (PII).'

The statement continues: 'The Company used Adobe Flash local storage in a manner consistent with other leading Flash analytics providers to deliver standard web analytics to publishers. Reports included aggregate statistics - unique users, views, widget installs, interaction time, and other audience metrics. The Adobe Flash local storage objects we set cannot access and do not contain PII.'

Clearspring participates with committees of the IAB to set interest-based ad standards and says it plans to 'vigorously defend itself against these claims.'

The company, which recently launched a new categorization and targeting product, Audience Platform, is online at www.clearspring.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.