Certain programs can still get the last 10 authors,
including outlook.
here is info someone sent me.
"Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing
private
information in file headers which people would sometimes
rather not
share. The British government of Tony Blair just learned
this lesson
the hard way.
Last week, Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of
Communications and
Strategy, was in the hot seat in British Parliament
hearings explaining
what roles four of his employees played in the creation
of a
plagiarized dossier on Iraq which the UK government
published in
February 2003. The names of these four employees were
found hidden
inside of a Microsoft Word file of the Iraq dossier which
was posted on
the 10 Downing Street Web site for use by the press.
The "dodgy
dossier" as it became known in the British press raised
serious
questions about the quality of British intelligence
before the second
Iraq war.
I wrote an article for my Web site about how a bit
computer forensics
analysis played a role in this controversy:
http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm
I strongly recommend that you take a look at Richard's
article. You'll
discover that Word saves the names of the last ten people
who edited a
document - as well as the file name and full path of the
document at
the time it was edited. You'll also discover that this
information can
be a bit, uh, more revealing than you might imagine.
Ends up there's nothing you can do about it. I repeat. No
matter what
you do, every Word document contains the names of the
last ten people
who edited the document, and the path and file name of
the document
when it was edited.
Those ten names appear whether Revision Tracking is on or
off. They
appear even if you've told Word 2002 to "Remove personal
information
from this file on save" (Tools | Options | Security - the
option
doesn't exist in Word 2000 and earlier).
Microsoft's response? Tough luck. That's the way Word was
designed.
Knowledge Base article 290945 says: "Word stores the
names of the last
10 people who worked on a document in the document. This
is an
automatic feature that you cannot turn off. However, you
can remove the
names of the last 10 authors from a document by saving
the document in
a format that does not retain such information. For
example, if you
save the document in either RTF (Rich Text Format) or
HTML format, the
authoring information is lost. You can then close and
reopen the RTF or
HTML document, and then save it in Word format."
It's remarkably easy to get at that information. Richard
sent me a
program several months ago that examines any Word
document and, in most
cases, coughs up the entire revision history in a matter
of seconds. (on Payne Consulting's website, Metadata
Assistant, for instance)
Makes me wonder about Word 2003. Is the entire revision
history stored
away in plain text when you save in XML format?
Also, don't forget: if you tell Word 2002 to "Remove
personal
information from this file on save", and then you send
the document to
someone else using Outlook 2002, Outlook will brand the
file with
personally identifiable information (see
http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n53
for details).
Between the Word "feature" that saves details about the
last ten edits
inside a document and the Outlook "feature" that stamps
Word documents
with unique numbers that identify the originating PC, I'd
say that the
"Remove personal information from this file on save"
terminology is a
bit, uh, disingenuous. A more cynical soul might even
judge the phrase
highly deceptive.
A Word to the wise. If you give a Word document to
someone else, or
post it on the Web, don't be too surprised if it contains
all sorts of
embarrassing details. To be safe, use PDF format.
