Today, Carnegie Mellon University published a research study titled “A Survey of the Use of Adobe Flash Local Shared Objects to Respawn HTTP Cookies.” I referenced this study in a blog post in December on the topic of the Federal Trade Commission’s preliminary privacy report released on December 1, 2010.

Some Background Behind the Study

Let me provide some background: Over the last 18 months, there have been a number of discussions around the alleged misuse of Adobe Flash Player local storage (or local shared objects, LSOs, in the public often referred to as “Flash cookies”) and the potential impact of this misuse on consumer privacy. The allegations have been that certain websites or ad networks use LSOs to restore browser cookies after users have chosen to clear their cookies (a process referred to as “browser cookie respawning”).

Adobe has actively participated in industry discussions on the topic and submitted an official comment to the Federal Trade Commission in preparation for the second FTC roundtable discussion on privacy last year, clearly stating our position on this misuse of local storage and the steps Adobe is taking to provide better privacy protection for consumers. In the comment to the FTC, we also confirmed our commitment to supporting research into the types and extent of the misuse of local storage. The Carnegie Mellon University study released today reflects that commitment.

About the Carnegie Mellon University Study

Adobe commissioned the Carnegie Mellon University research study in 2010 to follow up on the findings about misuses of Flash Player local storage detailed in a research paper released by the University of California at Berkeley in 2009. The Carnegie Mellon University study, performed by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor with assistance provided by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), was designed to determine the prevalence of the use of Flash Player local storage to respawn browser cookies. The study examined 600 websites based on Quantcast’s ranked list of the million most popular websites visited by United States Internet users—the 100 most popular sites and 500 randomly selected sites.

Study Results: Browser Cookie Respawning May be Waning

The study results suggest respawning is not increasing and may be waning. No instances of respawning were found in the randomly-selected group of 500 websites, and only two instances of respawning were found in the 100 most popular websites. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) followed up with the two companies, whose websites showed HTTP cookie respawning using LSOs. Both companies have stopped the practice—one on their own and one as a result of this study.

This is good news! Adobe proactively encourages our customers to use all Adobe products in responsible, ethical ways. While the nature of providing tools for an open platform means that we cannot, in practice and on principle, control how developers and content producers use our products, these results demonstrate that the vast majority of websites, developers and content producers use local storage capabilities for their intended purpose—to provide a better user experience.

The study found LSOs with unique content and made the assumption that it could be storing user IDs; however, it notes that not all unique content is used for identifying computers. Unique content could be benign, for example, uniquely identifying where a user paused a specific animation or music clip. Tracking users is of concern from a privacy perspective, but further insight would be needed to understand the extent to which local storage is used for the purpose of uniquely identifying and tracking computers or individuals. The study does conclude that even assuming a pessimistic worst case scenario in which all websites showing LSOs with unique content were using it to track users, the absolute number of websites doing so would be small and the overall percentage of all sites studied using LSOs to track users would be low.

Stakeholder Recommendations

The Carnegie Mellon University study also examines which steps stakeholders—Adobe included—might be able to take to further reduce privacy-sensitive practices. Privacy has become an increasingly significant topic. It’s important to recognize that privacy is not a static concept. As technology and the way we engage with it evolve, the privacy discussion will evolve. Adobe is committed to the consumer’s right to privacy, and we have taken and will continue to take appropriate steps with regards to safeguarding user privacy in our tools and policies. Our goal is to put consumers in control by enabling informed choices. The recently introduced privacy-related enhancements in Adobe Flash Player demonstrate that commitment.

Adobe Initiatives to Improve Privacy Options for Users of Adobe Flash Flayer

In June 2010, we released Adobe Flash Player 10.1 with support for the private browsing feature found in many Web browsers. When users activate private browsing in their browser, Flash Player will not save any of their information from that session.

Adobe has also been working with major browser vendors to develop effective approaches that allow users to control local storage in Flash Player directly from their browser privacy settings. Today, Google Chrome already provides access to Flash Player local storage settings from within the browser’s privacy controls. Our collaboration with representatives from several key companies—including Mozilla and Google—to define a new browser API for clearing local data takes this effort a step further: A new API for clearing local data (NPAPI ClearSiteData) was approved for implementation on January 5, 2011. Any browser that implements the API will be able to clear local storage for any plugin that also implements the API. The capability to clear Adobe Flash Player local storage from within the Google Chrome browser should be available on the Google Chrome dev channel in the coming weeks. Similar controls for other browsers should be available in the coming months. Once the browsers have included this feature in their settings, users will be able to control the clearing of their HTTP cookies and their plugin local storage in one place. This should also discourage the use of LSOs to respawn or to track users.

Additionally, we are currently working on a redesign of the Flash Player Settings Manager, which is expected to be available in the first half of the year. This redesign will make it simpler for users to understand and manage their Flash Player settings and privacy preferences. In addition, we will enable users to more easily find the Flash Player Settings Manager by providing access to it directly from the computer’s Control Panels or System Preferences on Windows, Mac and Linux.

For details on these upcoming privacy enhancements in Adobe Flash Player, see a recent blog post by Emmy Huang, group product manager for Flash Player, titled “On Improving Privacy: Managing Local Storage in Flash Player.”

The Carnegie Mellon University study released today recognizes some of our initiatives and introduces additional suggestions, which we will carefully evaluate. Privacy is an important topic. We are dedicated to including privacy controls in our products and services. And we look forward to continuing to play an active role in the privacy discussion as it evolves.

MeMe Jacobs Rasmussen
Chief Privacy Officer
Adobe Systems Incorporated

Ed Van Siclen, Vice President of Technology and Partner Solutions shares highlights from this week’s Adobe Partner Community Conference in Barcelona.   We welcome you to view the presentations and give us you feedback!

In a recent conversation, Andre Dolder, IT relationship manager at SUVA, told us that he implemented Adobe LiveCycle solutions to automate several key data collection and entry activities. The solution equips employees with electronic forms that are automatically updated, lowering the amount of manual entry and data collection required.

Along with a rich Internet application (RIA), which uses Adobe AIR to create a persistent presence on desktops and mobile devices—the solution enables SUVA field staff to instantly recall existing customer information, make any updates or changes necessary, and have customers sign the documents electronically to complete the application process. Now, instead of processing applications in batches once per week, applications can be processed on a daily basis, helping SUVA deliver services more rapidly and be more responsive to customer needs.

Dolder says that because of the improvements with the Adobe software the company has saved around 800,000 francs annually by reducing the amount of time and resources spent planning for customer visits. Click here to learn more.

Rounding out our month of celebrating our students aspirations, hopes and dreams, we had the opportunity to speak with Alex Perez, the student filmmaker who produced the hard hitting and inspiring film, “In This Life, Nothing Is Impossible.”

Adobe Youth Voices (AYV): How did you originally get inspired to make a film that featured so many personal, and at times difficult, details about a young person’s life?

Alex Perez (AP): My mentor Gabriel Lomeli and I were brain storming on what videos to make, and I told him I wanted to make a video about someone that was underprivileged. When Gabriel went to lunch the next day he saw a homeless person and he threw out that idea. I was enthusiastic about it, so we were thinking about which person we could choose. We later found our person when I learned that my friend Leamsi was homeless. I decided to choose him since I knew that he was also an immigrant from Puerto Rico. After hearing his story I was inspired by his story and thought it was perfect.

AYV: Your film is “based on a true story” – Can you tell us about the process of writing the script, how you chose what real life details to put into the film?

AP: I didn’t really have to write a script, we just set up several cameras and allowed him to tell us his life story and experiences. We later decided what footage we thought was most important. The only thing I had to figure out was the b-role while he was telling us his story.

AYV: Since making the film, what turns has your life taken? What are you doing now? What are your plans for the future?

AP: I am now in college preparing to get a bachelor’s in marketing and a minor in advertisement. I want to use my media skills to create advertisements.

Great (and busy!) first day of the World Economic Forum at Davos today. I feel really privileged to be able to attend this global gathering again this year and was honored to take part in a panel discussion on digital convergence.

The pulse here is cautious – not optimistic. There’s a sense among some that we aren’t sure whether the recovery of 2010 — which appears to have been strong — is holding steady.

A huge part of the discussion at this year’s gathering is the diminishing power of the West to set the tone of debates in finance, governance, education, and to a large extent IT.  The Indian and China contingents feel incredibly empowered to set the course of IT innovation and overall dominance of this recovery.

On the tech front, the key focus is around connectedness and convergence.  How do the business and social norms change when our lives are as connected as they are today?  What does this tell us about the way business needs to change?

In some ways it’s as if Customer Experience Management is the biggest issue in technology right now! Everyone agrees users are driving the changes, and businesses and governments need to be responsive to users.

I really enjoyed the lively discussion on the panel about digital convergence, led by the venerable David Kirkpatrick of the Daily Beast. The panel was a great discussion about the trends in digital innovation that are changing the way we conduct business.

More to come…

– Rob

Follow me on Twitter for more updates from Davos.

We recently spoke with Sairam Rangachari, senior vice president of products and innovation at optionsXpress and he told us about their goal to develop an entirely new type of trading platform.

With the Adobe Flash Platform, optionsXpress created Xtend, an all-inclusive trading console that employs the same award-winning, back-end technology as the optionsXpress web-based platform. Xtend—which investors can access easily from virtually any computer operating system and digital device—offers traders convenient access to active stock, options, and futures information for improved decision making and trading outcomes. Xtend is a dynamic, downloadable desktop app widget that offers a wide range of unique features and expert-quality research tools. Learn more here.

Guest post by Kate Busby

Here’s a little about Andy Jones from St Charles Roman Catholic Sixth Form College. He is like a backbone to Adobe Youth Voices London, one of the core educators who kept the project alive and kicking back when it was piloted in the UK three years ago.

Andy is a bit like London’s own Gregg Witkin, another Adobe Youth Voices icon, except that the two have never met: both are natural speakers, with an incredible enthusiasm and natural aptitude for teaching, which leads them very easily to have a whole-hearted investment in the program.

In Andy’s words, “Adobe Youth Voices is a lot more than pedagogical; because there is no specific assessment criteria or ticking boxes, the education the young people receive is unrestricted and incredibly enriching.”

In addition to regularly inspiring the masses, Andy is sometimes found writing textbooks to be distributed nationwide about media for Palgrade Publishers or teaching new media to future stars of the British film industry (Bafta award-winning director Noel Clarke, anyone?).

Having known his creative partner, Brighton-based photographer Tom Wichelow, for fourteen years, but never quite finding the right opportunity to rope him in to an artistic collaboration, Adobe Youth Voices came along and gave him exactly that chance. This is the fourth year that the two have been working fruitfully on the project together now, guiding the St Charles students as they research, recover and then express their family heritage in photographs.

This year, the participants are currently producing projects with two foci: stories of migration coupled with images of transition. They will be exhibited in what looks to be another moving and sensitive showcase at the British Film Institute as part of Adobe Youth Voices London Live from March 14th-16th, 2011.

Kate Busby
Adobe Youth Voices Master Educator

Congratulations to The Social Network for winning four Golden Globes. We’re happy David Fincher and his team used Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium software as part of their workflow to create the film. Learn more here.

Guest post by Gregg Witkin

Adriana, a senior at Boynton High School, loves music.  She never remembers a time in which music wasn’t an important aspect to her or her parent’s lives.  Her parents moved from Mexico and carried with them a love for music which they instilled in their daughter.  Having been born in San Jose, Adriana has been exposed to many different genres of music both from the US and Mexico.  Her upbringing has influenced her to pick up the clarinet and join an all girl Mexican band, a rarity in the male dominated world of Ranchero music.

Prior to attending Boynton Adriana didn’t really excel in an academic setting and came very close to dropping out of school.  After picking up the clarinet and transferring to Boynton she found herself changing, both in her role as a student and as a musician.  Now she feels she has unlimited potential both in school and in music, her outlook has been dramatically altered.

For Adriana her film is important to her as she strives to put to film her passion for music and impact it has had on her life and the relationships it has fostered.  She has found that the more she involves herself with music the more connected she feels to her family and friends.

Adriana hopes she will inspire others with her film to explore their own musical backgrounds and interest.

Gregg Witkin
Adobe Youth Voices Master Educator

It’s been nearly three months since we announced Acrobat X and we’ve been getting stellar reviews from many of you — our customers.

Check out today’s Acrobat blog post from Mark Grilli, Director of Product Marketing, Acrobat Solutions, as he shares  Acrobat X customer insights and commentary that we’ve been hearing along the way.

What we’re learning is that listening to you through our pre-release program and the many pre-announce customer meetings really paid off. These meetings gave us first-hand insight into how you see your business success and the important role Acrobat plays in helping you achieve those goals. Read the full post here.

Want to share your insights on Acrobat X, send Mark an email, mgrilli@adobe.com. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.