Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
Summary
A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a group of well-known Web sites broke the law by secretly tracking the Web movements of their users, including children.
Topics
A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a group of well-known Web sites, including those owned by Disney, Warner Bros. Records, and Demand Media, broke the law by secretly tracking the Web movements of their users, including children.
Attorneys representing a group of minors and their parents filed the suit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, records show. The suit alleges that Clearspring Technologies, a software company that creates widgets and also offers a way to serve ads via widgets, is at the center of the wrongdoing.
Web site operators such as Disney, Playlist.com, and SodaHead are "Clearspring Flash Cookie Affiliates," the plaintiffs allege in their suit. Clearspring set "Flash cookies on (affiliate site) users' computers...online tracking device(s) which would allow access to and disclosure of Internet users' online activities."
For more on this story, read Suit alleges Disney, other top sites spied on users on CNET News.
Talkback Most Recent of 33 Talkback(s)
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RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
Too many lawyers. God forbid that your kid ever learns (on their own) about something they would be interested in. They make it sound like NSA was tracking them.
coopejx@...16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@coopejx@...
God forbid any human being actuall expect any privacy these days too ey?
It doesn;t matter who was doing teh tracking, what matters is it was down in stealth and that is always a sign of bad things.
BlueCollarCritic16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@BlueCollarCritic Are you serious? You honestly think that privacy exists anymore? It may have existed in a limited fashion sometime before the advent of networking, but now it's little more than a ghost of a bygone era that likes to putter about getting people like you all worked up. If you want privacy then cancel your internet, cell phone, satellite/cable subscription and your credit and debit cards. Then you might get a modicum of privacy. I think people like you want to have your cake and eat it too. This is a data-centric world and your data is solid gold to the right people. You talk about how it was done surreptitiously. Are you even aware that you've been tracked just by visiting this site? I'm not sure about ZDNet's policy on tracking but, other independent companies track your data in the background constantly. You're probably not even aware of most of them. They buy information from DNS servers and search engines. Google tracks your searches and archives them. It's just a fact of life. either you enjoy the conveniences of the networked world and deal with it or you keep your precious illusion of privacy, and it is an illusion because the government tracks pretty much everyone to some extent, and become some kind of Neo-Luddite.
Str0b016th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
Str0b0 said:
"your data is solid gold to the right people"
That doesn't mean they have a right to access it.
RealPauper18th Aug 2010 -
If data is gold to all these companies they should be paying the customer..
@Str0b0 for the data. This kind of BS is just theft, they all need to start paying the customers for the use of their data. Companies that do this are nothing more than theives and should be treated as such.
dougogd@...25th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@coopejx@...
Not the NSA, worse. SodaHead is a right wing extremist crank site. It's like having Timothy McVeigh watching what web pages you logged on to.
Renifer16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
Spread 'em, Mickey!
AirBoss16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
Irony of ironies! Steve Jobs (Disney's biggest stockholder) spying on us with... FLASH?!?!?!
gfeier16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@gfeier Awesome comment! ROFLMAO!
landonthegr816th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
IF uncle Sam can do it Y Can't Disney or the Public
singhj@...16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@singhj@...
Uncle Sam doesn't like the competition LOL
WiccaMagick16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
i am a cookie monster!!! i eat them daily.
leroie16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
you can delate cookes on your PC
if you are in the UK you are spyed on
24/7 and you can not delate any of it
gaz
gaztaxi16th Aug 2010 -
If anything actually is done beyound a pittance of a fine I'll be suprised
after all these big corporations either outright own the polticians or at least have them rented for the current fiscal year so nothing really bad will happen. We might see some negligable fine so as to have something to parade around to the public and show how the governement is beung TUFF on corproations who do this but it will be just a fascade. No one will actually go to jail. But you let some citizen try and do something foolish like make an authorized copy of a Disney movie and you can bet the max senetnce will be delivered.BlueCollarCritic16th Aug 2010 -
RE: Disney, others sued over allegedly spying with 'flash cookies'
@BlueCollarCritic
I don't really disagree, but companies like Disney who depend on their reputations might stop doing this voluntarily, improve their notification process, or go with "opt in." Browser companies and/or Adobe might put Flash cookies under the same controls as cookies in general, so they're not exempt from your own privacy settings.
My biggest fear is that all the outcry over privacy will make the bad guys do a better job of hiding their intrusive practices. I don't think they have any interest or intention to make it easy for people to control their own information, and the bad publicity hurts them, so they'll just become sneakier. IMO it won't be long before we'll have to use "in private" for all our browsing, full disk encryption, etc.
DaveN_MVP16th Aug 2010
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