• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 1, 2011

In the latest of a string of lawsuits about online tracking, a paying AOL subscriber has sued the Web company for allegedly using Flash cookies to thwart her privacy settings.

Mississippi resident Sandra Person Burns alleges in her lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, that AOL, along with Brightcove and Tremor Media's ScanScout, "commandeered" her computer and set Flash cookies in order to bypass her own efforts to avoid online tracking. Burns, who alleges that she deletes her cookies five times a week, specifically asserts that she doesn't want to be tracked in order to receive behaviorally targeted ads.

Burns says in her lawsuit that despite her efforts to avoid behavioral advertising, she recently noticed "numerous" tracking cookies. She asserts that AOL, Brightcove and ScanScout used Flash software in order to back up her deleted HTTP cookies. "Defendants created a shadow tracking system on her computer, effectively decommissioning the browser cookie controls she had explicitly set," she alleges.

She argues that AOL, Brightcove and ScanScout violated the federal wiretap law, computer fraud law, and a law that specifically protects the privacy of people's video rentals. Burns is seeking class-action status.

The lawsuit, like other litigation about Flash cookies, appears to have been sparked by a 2009 report by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and other schools outlining how Flash can be used to circumvent consumers' settings. After the report was published, some Federal Trade Commission officials said they were concerned about the use of Flash for tracking purposes.

Flash cookies were originally designed to remember users' preferences for online video players and other applications, but some companies use such cookies to store the same type of information that is normally found on HTTP cookies. Historically, Flash cookies persist longer than HTTP cookies because they are stored in different places in the browser, which means that users who delete HTTP cookies don't necessarily also delete Flash cookies.

Adobe and some browser manufacturers have recently made it easier for people to delete Flash cookies.

Web users also have sued Web measurement company Quantcast and widget maker Clearspring for allegedly using Flash cookies. Those companies agreed to a $2.5 million settlement, which was approved last month.

A separate lawsuit against Specific Media is still proceeding. In April, U.S. District Court Judge George Wu in the Central District of California dismissed that case on the ground that the Web users hadn't been injured by the alleged use of Flash cookies. (Specific Media denies that it has used Flash for behavioral advertising purposes.) But the Web user who is suing recently reworked the lawsuit and filed it again.

The case, filed in Massachusetts, was brought by lawyers who have represented Web users in other Flash cookie litigation, including New York lawyer Scott Kamber and Dallas attorney Joseph Malley.

AOL and Brightcove have not returned messages left by Online Media Daily. A Tremor representative declined to comment.