FEATURE ARTICLE (A0005) : -

Microsoft documents give out more information then you intended! The document contains invisible data which a few us know exists. Especially in high secrecy documents the names of the people (multiple) can easily be identified. Proven by the identification of the four civil servants who worked on the 'Iraqi' dossier.

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).

On a smaller level it has given many people some advantages while going on a job hunt and receiving documents which have been modified over time. On a more public level the Washington Post leaked out some data to the public which they had been instructed to hide from the public.

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.

With the right tools this hidden data can easily be extracted. Unix and Linux users can turn to tools such as Antiword and Catdoc to turn the document, including its formatting information, into a simple text file.

This function allows identification of the Author /Authors of the document, the network the document traveled through as well as earlier versions of the file. That's why anyone who is worried about revealing personal data should consider using another word processing program or use Microsoft's advice about making the document safer