How does the online Flash Player Settings Manager work?

This is something I've always been curious about: how exactly does the online Flash Player Settings Manager work?

It's a SWF UI running in a regular Flash Player but it obviously has access to all sorts of low level Flash Player settings, which a typical SWF does not.

My first guess is that the UI is actually built into the Flash Player, but then why would you have to visit a website to see it? Is the SWF actually being served by the website, and the Flash Player trusts the website to have access to a low level player API not made public?

As a Flash developer for many years I've just been curious about this for a long time. Now that the manager is obsolete by the built in settings manager (which is a lot less mysterious) I thought I'd ask before it's completely forgotten.

- Aaron