What your PC knows about you!

[oz]

What your PC knows about you!

In a manner of speaking, I'm never bothered by what my computer knows about me. It's everyone else out there thinking that my computer should be reporting to them all that it knows that really bugs me!

[cousinlucky]

What it says about Flash cookies is true. They are quite separate from ordinary browser cookies and they reinstate themselves when deleted. I think I posted something about this myself earlier. The solution is obvious: don't use Flash. Use an open-source equivalent like gnash. Proprietary software never has your interests at heart.


btw congratulations on your enthusiast status, Lucky.

Hazel, I almost fell out of my chair I laughed so hard. I never noticed that!!
Thank You, that made my day!!! I'm still an illiterate though!!!

[cousinlucky]

In a manner of speaking, I'm never bothered by what my computer knows about me. It's everyone else out there thinking that my computer should be reporting to them all that it knows that really bugs me!

That worries me too, Ozar; plus wondering if my computer is infecting other computers with something.

I know there is something in my computer that broadcasts something out of my computer about five or ten minutes after I turn it on. I do not know what it is or where it is but I just unplug the phone cord if I see the light flickering. If I am not on line when it happens I just ignore it.

I figure it might be something from Big Brother or my ISP attached to my grub menu or one of its sub-folders!! I just leave my computer on most days because it only occurs after a start-up!!

[Freston]

In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/null or the null device is a special file that discards all data written to it (but reports that the write operation succeeded)

I'm inclined to say "yes, but" but years of training has taught me people who say "yes, but" mean to say "no, because".

So, I think it does work, the link to /dev/null but it doesn't give the 'write succeed' message to the offending party. Because if I write something to /dev/null/evilcookie/myevilcookie then it'll error. But that is what happens when you symlink the directory ~/.macromedia to the file /dev/null

All I mean to say is, that the party who's attempting to write a flash cookie and bothers to check whether it succeeded or not is able to figure they have a 'write failure' on their hands. Now I don't know if this message ever leaves the machine or that it's just the local software that's left to deal with it on it's own. But an equivalent of code of this:

write_cookie("~/.macromedia/track_user") or die("if you can't do evil, do nothing");

Would, in a world that follows my logic, die attempting to write the cookie. Would it not?