Arizona’s Supreme Court has ruled that metadata,(the hidden information that is contained most famously in Microsoft Word created documents) is part of the document and subject to disclosure under public record searches.
Metadata contained in Word documents, tracks and records versions, creation dates, changes, and authorship information. This is one reason that Word docs are so large in relationship to what actually is presented on the screen.
Doom on the poor bastards who do not pay attention to this. For folks with secret agendas, Word is probably not the tool they should be using.
The article points out some of the more famous and recent ‘gotchas’ with using Word for creating papers and letters.
Link: Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record – Ars Technica.
A Google search on Word Metadata brings up a whole cottage industry on scrubbing it and viewing it. The former being more important than the latter.
Interesting Times, indeed.