Adobe on Tuesday released Flash Player 10.3 beta, which provides users with greater control over the program's privacy and storage options.

Adobe on Tuesday released Flash Player 10.3 beta, which provides users with greater control over the program's privacy and storage options.

Going forward, users will be able to clear local storage - sometimes known as "Flash cookies" - on versions of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox. "Cookies" are little bits of data collected about your Internet activity. They can be useful - like remembering passwords and settings on sites that you surf to frequently - but there are also concerns about targeted advertising and how much data is really collected.

Web cookies can be deleted, but management of cookies inside products like Flash are a bit more complex. Adobe said Tuesday, however, that Flash Player 10.3 Beta "integrates control of local storage with the browser's privacy settings," something the company .

As a result, "users will have a simpler way to clear local storage from the browser settings interface, similar to how they clear their browser cookies today," Adobe said.

The Flash Player 10.3 beta local storage settings will apply to Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, and future releases of Safari and Google Chrome.

In Firefox 4 (right), the "Clear All History" option will have a "Cookies" option. Check it and click "Clear Now" to delete.

Mozilla executives said Tuesday that the release candidate for Firefox 4 is expected sometime this week, with a final release expected later this month. Firefox 4 also , which will give Web users the option not to have their activity tracked by third-party sites.

On IE, the "Delete Browsing History" window will also have a "Cookies" option, which reads: "Files stored on your computer by websites to save preferences such as login information." Check it and hit "Delete."

The 10.3 beta also simplifies the Flash Player settings manager as it relates to privacy, security, and storage settings. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can now access the Flash Player settings manager directly from the Control Panel or Systems Preferences on their computer.

Flash cookies, or local shared objects (LSO), made headlines recently when the Federal Trade Commission released a report that called on browser makers to in their products. The FTC also mentioned Adobe because it said the cookies gathered by Flash are collected regardless of the browser's settings.

Adobe added an in-private browsing option to Flash Player 10.1, which allows users to surf and play video content without having their activity tracked. But going forward, users will also be able to delete LSOs from their browser settings, whether they are using normal browsing or private.

Early last month, , which includes a feature known as Stage Video that promises increased performance while using less processing power. Adobe also promised other additions that were previewed in the beta version, including custom native mouse cursors, multiple monitor full-screen support, Internet Explorer 9 hardware accelerated rendering support, and enhanced sub-pixel rendering for superior text readability.