Spyware Sucks

Oh, I hope so.  Mind you, it's going to take me quite a while to get my head around this 7 page document, and all of the extra pages referred to ... anybody want to give me a crash course, or explain to my readers what sort of difference this will make in the fight against malicious banner advertisements? ;o)

Source: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer9_security.html

"In 2003, Flash Player 7 software introduced a channel of client-server communication that was new to the web: direct cross-domain data loading, authorized by policy files. Before policy files, web content could only perform two-way communication with its own server, such as runtime configuration or transactions without page reloads. Policy files allowed servers to open up their data selectively to client content from other domains, or generally to content from anywhere. Since the introduction of policy files, domain boundaries have been less of a barrier for authors of rich Internet applications.

Like most new technologies, policy files weren't perfect when they were first introduced. After four years, the Internet security community has found two undesirable situations (described later in this article) that can arise from the existence of policy files. The basic premise of policy files remains valid, and Flash developers can continue to rely on policy files just as they have since Flash 6. To address the new concerns, however, Adobe is specifying some stricter rules for the use of policy files. Additionally, there are a number of improvements that make policy files more useful and usable. We will try to explain the reasons for our changes clearly and simply."