Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Court Warns Lawyers to Scrub Metadata Before PDF Conversion
February 25, 2010
Hat tip to friend and colleague Carl Roberts who sent along the following e-mail from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
"It has come to the attention of the Court that Metadata (AKA Hidden Data) within Microsoft Office Word is NOT being removed from some documents prior to their conversion to PDF format for uploading to the Court CM/ECF server. Please be advised that Hidden Data CAN be retrieved from PDF documents if the data is NOT cleaned from the Microsoft Word document prior to conversion. Below is a link to Microsoft support. From this link you can search for updates that will remove this information (Metadata).
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx
Please be advised that the Court is providing this information as a public service and will NOT provide any technical support on this issue. If you are NOT aware of the procedure for removing Metadata, please contact your local Information Technology support team."
Carl says that his law firm has tested and confirmed the problem exists for some Word to PDF plug-ins, so be careful out there!
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