Easily Clean / Delete Flash Cookies From Mac OS X

Few days back, we shared with you a portable Windows application, “Flash Cookie Cleaner” to clean Flash Cookies. Today, we are going to share a how to which deals with cleaning up of flash cookies on Mac OS X. We will show you a manual cleanup process, and how to clean using “Flush.app” and KFC (Kill Flash Cookies).

Update: This article was first published on March 25, 2010. It has been edited with additional information on September 30, 2012.

We described in our previous article what these Flash Cookies really are. For those who are still ignorant about Flash cookies or super cookies, which is called Local Shared Objects (LSO), they work in a similar way as any regular browser cookies but are stored outside the purview of your browser. More details after the break.

What are flash cookies? A revisit.

Local shared objects (LSOs), commonly called flash cookies or super cookies, are stored outside your regular browser cookies folder. They are designed to be more persistent than a regular browser cookie. LSO’s are pieces of data that Adobe Flash based websites use to store on a user’s computer.

Typically these flash cookies can be used by websites to collect information on how people navigate the website and for other tracking processes. These flash cookies are also used to track users and store information about them.

What all this means to you? How you are affected?

Normally, you cannot delete these LSO’s (flash cookies) by using the privacy control settings present in your browser. This doesn’t change for whether you are using Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari or any other alternative web browser. To clean these persistent Flash cookies, you can either follow the manual cleanup process described below or use a simple application known as Flush.app.

How to manually clean flash cookies on Mac OS X?

On Mac OS X they are stored in the following location:

~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/

The settings for the Flash cookies are typically stored in the following location:

~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/

The ~ signifies the user home directory.

Open both the locations one by one in Finder (or by pressing Command + Shift + G, paste the above location one at a time into the Go To Folder box and click on Go. Select all the files and folders present in those locations and delete them.

delete flash cookies in os x

In OS X, all Local Shared Objects, or Flash Cookies, are appended with a .sol suffix.
Information: Development of the apps below seems stopped by its developers. Please use the manual cleanup process discussed above.

How to delete flash cookies on Mac OS X using KFC (Kill Flash Cookies)?

Kill Flash Cookies (KFC) is a freeware Mac OS X app which has one of the most simplest user interface we have seen. KFC will try to delete all the flash cookies found on your Mac. Simply, download and launch KFC app and press the Delete button.

How to delete flash cookies on Mac OS X using Flush.app?

Flush.app will help you remove these Flash cookies (.sol) and their settings.

Mirror download link to Flush (Flash cookie removal tool) since the official site machacks.tv is down. Download from official website Flush.app

Flush app is very easy to use. Upon launching, Flush will find and delete all flash cookies from your Mac. Flush works with Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Note: If you are an OS X Tiger and Panther user, then you can try using Flush Tiger.app. You can download Flush Tiger.app from here (no longer available for download).

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