Working w/ Global settings in Flash to get around Sandbox Security issue

I am working on an app that needs local resources and network resources.  I was getting very frustrated during my development because I couldn't read the local setup file.  Unfortunately, after a lot of digging around, the only reason I could find that the app wouldn't load was because the global settings for flash had been changed.  Because these settings are only available by going online here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
or here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html
or here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html
or here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html
or here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

The following isn't a tab, but allow you to view set your player updates:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html

Anyways, the annoyance for me is a couple of things:
1) why is this remote (aka why do I have to keep reloading a page  to look at flash player settings inside of a flash swf?)
2) What is the garbage that Charles is recording going back and forth, and
3) where is this swf object located on my machine so that I may have some more control over it.

It's amazing to see what sites (intentionally visited or not - which includes pop-ups) that are stored in the global settings…I need to understand this more if I'm going to want more security for my machine.

Anyways, the point I had about this post was that the global security settings were causing me some problems in connecting my app to the intertubes.  Once I made a checkmark on the Global Security Settings, I could actually see content and it resolved my problems (and all of this started as a search into possible cross domain issues, and not just my own irrational fears that someone might actually want to track all the websites I've been to and store private information about it without letting me know/delete/erase this stuff, manage my own security, etc…).