Oh so now it's a big deal? These have been around forever people, c'mon!
I don't understand why flash doesn't hook into browser privacy settings by default. Instead, you have to install custom software like the firefox betterprivacy extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/.
Back when I used to use windows, I used to touch two files called "#Security" and "#SharedObjects" in the flash player app data folder, which prevented it from downloading anything at all. In retrospect, it was an overly heavy-handed way of doing things :)