A Carnegie Mellon University study suggests that about 10 percent of popular Web sites may be using so-called "Flash cookies" to track users, paidContent reports. The study, commissioned by Adobe, tested the 100 most popular Web sites and 500 others that were randomly selected, finding "none of the 500 random sites engaged in re-spawning, and only two of the 100 most-popular sites engaged in re-spawning," the report states. However, a significant number of Web publishers "still won't say if they're using Flash cookies for tracking." Adobe, the creator of Flash Player, has condemned the use of its local storage objects for tracking purposes and recently introduced changes to simplify Flash's privacy options.
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