Most folks are not aware that document files contain metadata that is not visible to the average user. This metadata includes, at minimum, the name of the person who installed the software and the name of the organization to whom it was registered.
Jenkins Law points out the following in an article on legal ethics:
ABA Ethics Opinion 06-442 (August 5, 2006) states that “The Model Rules of Professional Conduct do not contain any specific prohibition against a lawyer’s reviewing and using embedded information in electronic documents, whether received from opposing counsel, an adverse party, or an agent of an adverse party.” Many individual state bar associations have also issued ethics opinions concerning metadata. However, according to the ABA, “there is no clear consensus on the major metadata issues.” The ABA has created a chart comparing these state opinions.
Despite the lack of legal consensus, this can be a big problem if the owner of the original document is supposed to be kept confidential. Attorneys are probably most aware of the need for metadata scrubbing, but still only about 60% of law offices use metadata scrubbing software.
This number is actually higher than reality, however. I saw an article about this at Ride the Lightning and Sharon Nelson points out,
While this is good news from an ethical standpoint and smart in an e-discovery world, it is a little scary that, when asked to identify which metadata scrubber they used, a large percentage of respondents said “Adobe Acrobat.” While we love this product and constantly recommend it, it is not designed as a metadata removal tool. In fact, we often joke that Acrobat is the “poor man’s metadata scrubber” because it does remove MOST but not ALL of the metadata in a document.
As Nelson points out, saving a document as a PDF will remove some metadata, but the chance is still there for some to get through. Nelson recommends Metadata Assistant for wiping this information,but I’ve got a better recommendation – UPGRADE.
You heard me. Upgrade. Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010 both have built-in features for removing metadata from files. This article tells you how to remove metadata from any file in Windows 7 (with screenshots).
In Word 2010, simply go to the File tab, then Info, Check for Issues, then Inspect Document.
Simply select what you’d like to inspect the document for, then click “Inspect.”
Next remove any unwanted metadata by selecting “Remove All.”
It will then notify you that it has been removed.
It’s that easy. By simply upgrading to Windows 7 and using MS Office 2010, you can take care of a lot of your metadata issues. If your law office or organization simply won’t do that, try MetaData Assistant, iScrub, or Doc Scrubber. The advantage of MetaData Assistant and iScrub is that they scrub email attachments prior to sending them. No matter which tools you use, get er’ done!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I remember reading that similar settings are available in Open Office. It’d be interesting to see a post regarding ways to scrub metadata using that open source word processing software.
A PDF file will not retain metadata of an Office file, but the converter can introduce metadata of its own.
The Remove Metadata feature of Windows 7 won’t remove metadata from any file. It will remove SOME metadata from a small number of file types. It will not remove tracked changes, comments, and other hidden data from Office documents. To clean Office documents you shuold use the Document Inspector in Office 2007 & 2010 or a specialized third party tool.
Other tools that scrub email attachments are Workshare Protect, ConfidentSend, and SendShield.
Hey Kixunq, thanks for clarifying that about PDF files and Windows 7. I will have to look into those additional scrubbing software utilities.
Hey Chris, I’ll have to play with Open Office some more and post on that at a later date. Also, I’ll look into some more open source tools other than just word processing software. It would be nice to find something that does a nice job eliminating EXIF data from images as well, which can store a lot of information about the camera used to take the image as well as a latitude and longitude if the image was geo-tagged.
For full disclosure, I’d like to first say that I work for PayneGroup (we produce the Metadata Assistant).
We wouldn’t want anyone to miss the point of using a good 3rd party metadata cleaner. What we offer above and beyond is 1) Check outgoing emails with file attachments; 2) Hook into your DMS (most DMS’); 3) Process many more metadata types that are actually found in a document; 4) Analyze files for metadata and provide you with a report prior to your decision to clean; 5) Batch process multiple files; 6) and much much more.
Thank you for this opportunity to add my comments.
Thanks for stopping by, Ms. Hughes. Feel free to jump in any time. Thanks for tactfully making a sales pitch by explaining your product’s features on a post relevant to the topic. You are welcome to comment anytime (and future comments should be auto-approved).