Yahoo Toolbar and Macromedia Flash Cookies

Two threads at Threadwatch:

• Yahoo's Adsense Competitor is Behavioral, Not Contextual which goes into Yahoo's new competitor-to-Adsense program that targets behavioral (where you surf) rather than contextual (what's on the pages you surf) ads at users.
• Yahoo! is Evil? which discussed Macromedia bundling the Yahoo toolbar with the Flash player.

As I posted at Threadwatch:

I can see it now: "90% of computers have Flash installed"; users are getting pretty hip about deleting cookies; Flash now can install Flash-based cookies that aren't visible in your normal cookie file and (so far as I know) can only be removed at the Macromedia site; the Flash player now comes bundled with the Yahoo toolbar. Anyone see a picture here? :)

So, what's the story here? Pure speculation guesses that Macromedia is doing an end run around user cookie deletion. I really hope that isn't true. Follow the money says … hmmm.

And check out the Flash Settings (Cookie) manager. You may have cookies that you don't know about and can't get rid of through your normal browser cookie deletion features.

Tsk tsk.