I might have to disagree with this belief that the Flash player could potentially prove to be a privacy risk to those who use it. Speaking for myself, I would see Windows Media Player or the Real Player to be more likely in this area rather than the Flash player.

Macromedia’s Flash media player is raising concerns among privacy advocates for its little-known ability to store computer users’ personal information and assign a unique identifier to their machines.

“A lot of media players come with identifiers embedded in them to track content usage and digital rights management,” Chris Hoofnagle, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s West Coast office, said. “With respect to Windows Media Player and now the Macromedia player, we’re realizing that the media players themselves are creating privacy risks.”

Flash, popular for its ability to play animation and video clips, employs a technology known as local shared objects to save up to 100KB of information on users’ hard drives. By assigning a unique identifier to a computer and preserving it in the space for the local shared object, a website can recognize that someone has already visited the site, and advertisers can use the information to determine that a visitor has previously viewed an ad. Websites that require users to fill out personal information can also associate that data with the identifier. [Read the rest]