The perils of Metadata in documents
Loose lips sink ships, so the old saying goes. These days documents are emailed back and forth and many times, revisions are made to “polite the text” up or “sanitize” or “redact sensitive information”. With many file formats though, the metadata about the revisions (or even the old versions of the data itself) are still there. The Security Fix has a great article on the topic today.
I remember a story several years ago about businesses being burned by revision changes that still existed in the Word document that was mailed out. (Application letters that had been changed for several employers/position availabilities with salary info/interoffice memos with poorly chosen comments about coworkers/bosses and even security breaches of sensitive information.)
What to do???? Brian gives some good links to Adobe’s site and information on finding metadata in pdf documents, Microsofts how-to find and remove meta-data for Microsoft Office documents, Harlan Carvey’s site on locating metadata in Windows and online (this link not currently working?) and a good freeware find…. Trace which is for finding documents with metadata online on an intranet, or on your pc. Like I said, this last one looks like a great piece of freeware.
It looks like the above are good reads for people that work with getting documents out to the public, or work in an organization that sends documents out to the world.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts - Beware: Wolves in sheeps clothing found on different sites (security scams) This is another "wolf in sheeps clothing" alert. The Sunbelt blog has information and tips on a number of other sites that are posing as either the Windows security center page, or a page not found error. The windows security center spoof once again claims the following "Attention! Your system......
- How embarrasing... Computer security firms database hacked The Washington Times, has a story from Brian Krebs of their Security Fix blog about ... Guidance Software -- the leading provider of software used to diagnose hacker break-ins -- has itself been hacked, resulting in the exposure of financial and personal data connected to thousands of law enforcement officials......
- Google Analytics under the microscope I've spent some time this evening looking at Google Analytics. (Now the data is being collected.) And I've got to say I'm impressed with the scope of what I'm seeing. First, since last night, more stats have been collected, there seem to be some missing from today yet (maybe ~12......
Related Websites - Useful Techniques For Web Site Optimization One of the most extremely serious things that you'll need to tend to once you have started a search engine optimization campaign will be to help make your website user friendly. Your online platform is destined for human users for this reason you may have to make sure that your......
- Article Marketing Benefits And Advantages When you've been at article marketing for a while, it can really amaze you to see just how many programs, courses and ebooks are being sold to teach how to generate traffic. Thousands of dollars are spent on these products year after year, but the people who buy them hardly......
- Finding Collectibles Online Everybody has some kind of special item that has been in the family for as long as anyone can remember. It might be a vase, an antique jar or some other special collectible. As far as we can tell, its been handed down from one generation to the next, and......
Similar Posts
- General Support Documents
- Adobe Reader 8.1 has Encountered an Error and Needs to Close
- Beware emails that sound too good to be true
- Adobe Acrobat reader update
- Profiteering and scams after Katrina