Filed under: Security, Text, Utilities, Windows
Doc Scrubber removes hidden data from your documents
by Jay Hathaway Nov 20th 2008
Every Word file can contain a fairly large amount of metadata. This is stuff like the revision logs (for tracking changes), name of the author, last time edited, and last time printed. All that information is there for a reason, but embarrassing incidents have been known to occur when people don't realize what they're sending in their metadata. If you want to avoid that, you could delete it all by hand, or you could get Doc Scrubber, a free metadata-removal app. Doc Scrubber can quickly tell you what all the "hidden info" on your docs says, or just delete it for you. It'll handle multiple docs at once, and is compatible with Word 97, 2000 and XP files. It doesn't do DOCX files, but those also don't handle metadata the same way, so they're less likely to expose your info.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
minibar said 3:46PM on 11-20-2008
"It doesn't do DOCX files, but those also don't handle metadata the same way, so they're less likely to expose your info."
Using the same logic and grammar, DOC handles metadata differently, so they're less likely to expose your info.
(RTF stores no metadata whatsoever.)
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Mike said 5:44PM on 11-20-2008
RTFA
The old doc format was notorious for leaving loads of the revision logs, whereas docx it rarely happens. So no, it doesn't work the other way around, and yes, the author said it right the first time.
GTFO
Nick said 8:30PM on 12-02-2008
I have this program! I use it for docs i publish!
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