May 13, 2011 10:46 GMT  ·  By

At the start of this month Adobe launched the Release Candidate of Flash 10.3 delivering privacy enhancements across the table, including for users running Internet Explorer 9 and IE8. Now the final version of Flash 10.3 is available for download, and customers are advised to grab it and update as soon as possible.

In addition to the various enhancements and security patches contained, Flash 10.3 also makes it extremely simple for IE9 and IE8 users to remove Local Shared Objects (LSOs).

Also known as Flash Cookies, LSOs were outside the reach of Internet Explorer ahead of version 10.3 of Flash.

This through no fault of Microsoft, especially since the Redmond company provided the necessary application programming interface (API) for Adobe to leverage and enhance user privacy with the launch of Internet Explorer 8.

It certainly took Adobe a while, but per the better-late-then-never approach, the company managed to embrace the IE IDeleteBrowsingHistory Interface with Flash 10.3.

“Flash Player 10.3 enables local storage clearing within browsers’ privacy settings and streamlines the controls of the Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings within the local control panel of desktop OSes,” Adobe stated.

This means that customers running IE9 or IE8 in tandem with Flash 10.3, will be able to turn to the good old Delete Browsing History in order to remove a variety of locally stored data, including Flash cookies.

Ahead of Flash 10.3, Delete Browsing History only covered standard HTML cookies, and not LSOs from the browser’s extensions, including Flash.

Of course, with Flash 10.3 supporting the IDeleteBrowsingHistory Interface, customers will also be able to take advantage of InPrivate Browsing without fear that Flash will store cookies on their computer.

As far as I’m concerned, IE9 is the best bet for privacy minded users, since it offers Tracking Protection, a features that allows customers to block communications between the browser and third parties tracking them online. No other browser is capable of doing this by default.

Flash 10.3 is available for download here. Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Platform Preview 1 (PP1) is available for download here.

Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.