don't use MICROSOFT WORD! It leaks SECRETS!

Some time ago, I opened a Microsoft Word document with Notepad. As I

browsed the contents, I was surprised to find the registration

information. Like your name! So if you compose an anonymous letter in

Word, you will be found out!

On searching the web, there is even more disturbing find: Word keeps

record of changes in the document!

Like if you were going to offer to someone something for $100, then

changed your mind to $50. On close examination of the file, the

recipient can find out your initial offer!

How about the other office applications? Excel, Access, and Powerpoint?

USE ADOBE ACROBAT INSTEAD. And may be WordPerfect Office.

Following are press coverage of the issue:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2006-01-19-hidden-msword-data_x.htm

CyberSpeak

by Kim Komando

Remove hidden data in Microsoft Word documents

You probably e-mail business letters, resumes and personal documents as

Word documents. But you may be telling people things that would make

your hair curl. Unless you take extra steps, recipients of Word

documents can easily see items deleted or modified.

For example, how about that letter you sent to Joe Jones? You first

referred to him as a "sniveling creep." You changed that to "great guy."

But Joe may know what you really think.

Hidden within that letter was your original wording. Microsoft Word

dutifully saved it all. And Joe doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to

find it.

Anybody who uses Word risks exposing sensitive information. Word inserts

metadata (information about data) to help identify author names,

document titles, keywords, print and save dates, and names of people who

have reviewed and saved a document. Metadata can also spill the beans

about your place of business: your company or organization's name, the

name of the network server or hard drive on which the document is saved

and any comments added.

Metadata is useful when multiple people are working on one document.

Let's say you create a document and send it to your boss for approval.

You'll probably want to track changes made.

However, it could be disastrous if others discover the information.

Imagine submitting a business proposal with varying figures (written as

comments) on "nonnegotiable pricing."

Komando hosts a national radio show about computers and the Internet. To

find the station nearest you broadcasting Kim's show, visit:

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her at gnstech(AT)gns.gannett.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3154479.stm

The hidden dangers of documents

Dot.life - how technology changes us

By Mark Ward

BBC News Online technology correspondent

Your Microsoft Word document can give readers more information about you

than you might think. Even Alastair Campbell has fallen foul of the

snippets of invisible data few of us realise our documents contain.

You could be leaking sensitive information

Usually with Microsoft Word, what you see is what you get.

If you make a change to a document, then that is what you see when it

gets printed out.

But in fact, in many cases it is what you cannot see at first glance

that proves more interesting.

Hidden and dangerous

Analysis of hidden information in the so-called Iraq "dodgy dossier"

showed, among other things, the names of the four civil servants who

worked on it.

Downing Street press office head Alastair Campbell had to explain who

these people were to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select

Committee investigating the genesis of the plagiarised document.

Alastair Campbell had to explain hidden names

"The time when most information tends to leak is when you are using a

document that has a number of revisions or a number of people working on

it," says Nick Spenceley, founder director of computer forensics firm

Inforenz.

The UK government has now largely abandoned Microsoft Word for documents

that become public and has turned to documents created using Adobe

Acrobat which uses the Portable Data Format (PDF).

"I'm not sure many people check Word documents before they go out or are

published," says Mr Spenceley.

He says he knows of a case in which someone found previous versions of

an employment contract buried in the Word copy he was sent. Reading the

hidden extras gave the person applying for the job a big advantage

during negotiations.

Sometimes the mistakes are even more public.

During the hunt for the Washington sniper the police allowed the

Washington Post to publish a letter sent to the police that included

names and telephone numbers.

HIDDEN TEXT

Text from other documents open at the same time

Previously deleted text

E-mail headers and server information

Printer names

Data about the machine where the document was written

Where the document was saved

Word version number and document format

Names and usernames of document authors

The newspaper tried to hide these details using black boxes which were

easily removed and the sensitive details exposed for all to see.

But it is not just governments, businesses and newspapers that can be

embarrassed in this way.

You could be too.

There is a function in many versions of Microsoft Office programs, which

includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that means that fragments of data

(which Microsoft refers to as metadata) from other files you deleted or

were working on at the same time could be hidden in any document you save.

This could be embarrassing for any home workers whose colleagues find

out that they have been applying for jobs while working at home or being

less than complimentary about their co-workers.

Look and learn

With the right tools this hidden data can easily be extracted.

Computer researcher Simon Byers has conducted a survey of Word documents

available on the net and found that many of them contain sensitive

information.

Sensitive data was exposed during the hunt for the Washington sniper

He gathered about 100,000 Word documents from sites on the web and every

single one of them had hidden information.

In a research paper about the work Mr Byers wrote that about half the

documents gathered had up to 50 hidden words, a third up to 500 words

hidden and 10% had more than 500 words concealed within them.

The hidden text revealed the names of document authors, their

relationship to each other and earlier versions of documents.

Occasionally it revealed very personal information such as social

security numbers that are beloved of criminals who specialise in

identity theft.