How to Delete Google Chrome Adobe Flash Cookies (.sol files) - Respawning Cookies

How to clean up those nasty Adobe Flash Cookies (.sol files) in Google Chrome used to Respawning Deleted Cookies

Flash Cookies dump

Google Chrome bundles Adobe Flash with their Chrome web browser, because Adobe could not be trusted to write secure code, but now is caught in the Adobe Flash cookie dump load. 

The big issue with Adobe Flash, is that it can store it's own data on your machine, which now is being used by Adware companies for tracking, in other words a cookie, but with much more detail and storage capacity. Worse, the vast majority of users probably didn’t realize you even could do this — or that you perhaps should.

Adobe Flash calls these cookies Flash Local Shared Objects which are files ending in .SOL, or euphemistically Shit Out of Luck files.

Many sites make it clear that browser cookies are in use, but not Adobe Flash Cookies.

right-click a on flash file & move Local Storage to None

Moreover, Adobe Flash cookies are being use to surreptitious store data to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, called ‘re-spawning’. So even if you get rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the “backup". In effect, your have continuous tracking.

Google has maintained since they started bundling Flash that it was mainly to ensure they could make it more secure for their Chrome users. They do this by both sand boxing it and auto-updating it when the security patches regularly appear. In other browsers, Adobe Flash is a separate download and stand-alone plug-in. 

You can turn off the creation of Adobe Flash Cookies by moving Local Storage setting to null. You can navigate to adobe.com/products/flashplayer.html. Right-click a on flash file & move Local Storage to None, to stop downloading of flash cookies. Read more about Adobe Flash settings here http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html

Let's examine where Adobe Flash Cookies are on disk, which Google Chrome directories they live in. You'll want to delete all of these sites. Here's a sample site TED.com that stores a Flash cookie.

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\WritableRoot\#SharedObjects\{userkey}\www.ted.com
TEDPlayer.sol

Additionally, there are shadow copies of all these cookies, one per site in this directory

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\WritableRoot\#SharedObjects\{userkey}\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys

Other Adobe Flash cookie stores are 

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\CacheWritableAdobeRoot\AssetCache\{userkey}\

Tip - Cut'n paste this into Windows Explorer Path Windows to open in 

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\CacheWritableAdobeRoot\AssetCache\

Navigate one level down. They are littered with files like

F74FCD943BAC79E6DADBF0307B55B0697C5907E4.heu

67BA9F962EEC4D8B413432AFAD5C88BB810426B9.swz

.HEU files are Adobe Flash Player cache metadata files.  

.SWZ files is a signed Adobe Flash Player library file.


Examine your .SOL Flash Cookies 

You can view the contents of your .sol files using this utility from Nirsoft.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/flash_cookies_view.html

Delete your .SOL Flash Cookies in Chrome

Chrome now allows users to easily clear cookies form from within the browser, this also includes Flash cookies.

Settings -> "Show advanced settings..." (at bottom of page)
-> Click Clear browsing data... button.

Choose this option to clear Adobe Flash cookies

Better, you can also set up Chrome to clear all plug-in cookie data every time you close Chrome.

Delete Adobe Flash Cookies

Even better use Bleach Bit, and you can delete all you Adobe Flash Cookies across all browsers at once! 

You can download BleachBit a new privacy tool here.
http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

How to Delete Google Chrome old Install & Update Files

How to Remove Google Chrome old Install and Update Files

installation files dump

It may surprise you to learn that Google Chrome is a pig when it comes to file management. 

This post will deal with Install and Update File management. Each time Chrome updates to a new version the old installation files and downloads are never cleaned. And this wastes a fair deal of space over time, I cleaned 156 Mb in over course of last 2 years.

Now, that being said Google tries to manage this but falls short. For fail-over purposes you'll be surprise to find out that Google Chrome keeps a full 2 versions of active browser working at the same same time.


The current Google Chrome and previous versions are located in the Application directory:

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application

 chrome.exe and  old_chrome.exe (the previous version, and all binaries in a separate directory)

The good part of the story is Google Chrome will maintain the current version and all files and 1 version back, as seen in the image to the left.You can blow of the last version to save a nominal amount of space.

The Installation Files Dump Load - the history of all old Google apps installs

The problem is that the original downloaded upgrade files and installation files do not get cleaned up.

These files are located in the following directories.

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Install
%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Download

Note these directories are the common Install and Download UPDATE directories to to all Google Products, included most commonly Picasa, Earth, Sketch-up etc for its upgrade files.

But they are not needed and just take up space, see image to left. You see directories with GUID names, totally meaningless to understand.

Here how to do some spring cleaning of these directories that will clean Google Chrome and other Google installed Products/Apps.

I like to do things the reliable way and speediest so I created this Windows Batch file to delete the files for these 2 directories.



Download GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat and run it.

NOTE - You may have to run this a few time for the directories to be re-created. I had to run this 3 times. Just put %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update into your Windows Explorer address bar and you see if the two directories are created under this.


Here's the code to review. Download GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat

I also recommend using BleachBit a new tool to delete cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there for Google Chrome, Firefox and IE Browsers.

http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

There is an option to delete old install files however.

Again, the batch file GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat, it super quick and efficient.



If you like this article, you like my series on Google Chrome (you can search for it) or here's a list

1. How to Delete Google Chrome Adobe Flash Cookies (.sol files) - trackers galore
2. How to Delete Google Chrome Temporary (.TMP) Files - crap piles up daily
3. Google Chrome InPrivate/Incognito Browsing leaves traces in index.dat & turning off Google Browser history online!

How to Delete Google Chrome Temporary (.TMP) Files

How to Delete Google Chrome Temporary (.TMP) Files

Also - How to Delete Google Chrome Adobe Flash Cookies (.sol files) - Respawning Cookies

*.tmp dump

It may surprise you to learn that Google Chrome is pig when it comes to file management. 

This post will deal with Temporary files (*.tmp) management. Each day Chrome will produce about 25 such files which vary in size of 0,28,100kb.

These are not temporary cache files from the internet which live in

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache directory have no file extensions.

These temporary files a generate from Chrome install process, updates, and daily workings create files ending with extension .tmp. There is no mechanism for these files to get clean-up.

In the course of writing this blog, I cleaned a whopping 1 Gig of space in *.TMP files alone, which was a span of 3 yrs of Chrome use.

Here's how to do some spring cleaning of your Google Chrome Browser TMP files.

TMP files are generated in any of the sub-folders, starting at this top Chrome directory; 

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\

which contains 1,163 sub-folders (on my machine, this will vary, the point is, it;s allot).

My GoogleChromeDeleteAllTMPfiles.bat file will delete all *.TMP files in those sub-folders.

For a quick check to spot *.TMP on your machine, check these folders since Chrome produces *.TMP files daily there

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIcons
%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIconsOld

Here's the code to review that deletes all Chrome *.TMP files


Download the GoogleChromeDeleteAllTMPfiles.bat, double click to run it, that's it.

I also recommend using BleachBit a new tool to delete cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there.

http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

There is an option to delete *.TMP files but it is a system wide scan and took a very long time to run.
FYI Choose Deep Scan - Temporary Files.

So hence the windows batch file GoogleChromeDeleteAllTMPfiles.bat, it super quick and efficient.