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With internet privacy being the hot topic that it is, users are getting educated about the technological facts that pose the supposed threat. Cookies have become the focal point of this issue, which causes people to start deleting them more and more. As cookies are about the only way an online campaign can be tracked, it’s time to start thinking about an alternative.

The fact cookies are often mistaken for programs doesn’t help either. The cookie has gone from being a helpful piece of text to being perceived as a malicious intruder robot telling all the things you don’t want people to know, to everyone who shouldn’t know about it. As cookies are about the only way other computers can learn past behaviour from eachother, this trend might be difficult to change.

For now, most people enjoy the cookie and its customised browsing experience. But what will happen to tracking when people won’t mind typing in their passwords daily for the sake of privacy ? Next to people cleaning up their data, cookies are being taken care of by spyware removal programs in a third of the internet users computers.

The solution to this problem is Flash Shared Objects. Shared Objects show a lot of similarities with ordinary cookies and are already nicknamed Flash Cookies. The big difference is that they aren’t deleted in the same way a cookie is.

Flash Shared objects allows storing of information on your computer to retrieve it at a later time. Like this high scores of a player can be saved on a computer for a Flash game on a website for example. And also more traditional cookie information. Shared objects are stored in .sol files located in the Flash player directory of the user's profile. Deleting cookies of course doesn’t affect these files.

Of course, word will get out on the Flash Cookie too, so the industry needs to make sure Flash Cookies don’t get the same reputation as ordinary cookies. Most tracking platforms aren’t capable of using this technology already. Depending on the steepness of the cookie deletion curve, they might have to start adapting to it soon though.

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