Document Metadata Springs Google’s Anonymity
Document Metadata Springs Google’s Anonymity
June 2, 2008: Thanks to a case of dirty documents gone wrong at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Google has been outed as a critic of eBay and its decision to force users into its PayPal payment system.
The ACCC listed a large number of complaints regarding eBay’s actions on its website, however, one 38-page anonymous submission caused quite a stir.
The complaint criticised eBay for being anti-competitive among other things, but it was not long until it was anonymous no more.
Upon examination of the PDF’s metadata, Canberra’s David Bromage discovered the line: “Microsoft Word - 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC” fingering Google as the likely author of the complaint.
Bromage published his findings on the website AuctionBytes, which prompted the ACCC to replace the offending PDF with a new, clean document.
While Google may or may not be the actual author of the complaint, the incident highlights just how easy it is for damaging mistakes to be made if an organisation does not have a strong grasp of information security.
Applications are storing more information in invisible metadata than ever before, and for many deploying software to clean all outgoing documents can prove invaluable when it comes to document security.
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