MS Office Privacy Issues : New Evidence Eliminator program upgrade v5.058 for Office 2003

Announcing a new program upgrade v5.058

Keep a step ahead of the ongoing Microsoft Office changes that threaten your confidentiality and privacy.

Evidence Eliminator's new enhanced product version 5.058, released in October 2003, meets the challenges of MS Office 2003 privacy issues that confront the average user.

Why should anyone be concerned about MS Office products? Well lets look a now famous example from recent history!!!

Excerpts from the "computer bytes man.com" website.

Microsoft Word bytes Tony Blair in the butt

"Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private information The British government of Tony Blair just learned this lesson the hard way.

"February 2003, 10 Downing Street published a dossier on Iraq's security and intelligence organizations. ..........

"Blair's government made one additional mistake: they published the dossier as a Microsoft Word file on their Web site. I decided to try to learn who had worked on the document. I downloaded the Word file containing the dossier from the 10 Downing Street Web site and found the following revision log in the file:

 Rev. #1: "cic22" edited file "C:\DOCUME~1\phamill\LOCALS~1\
                            ...\Temp\AutoRecovery save of Iraq - security.asd" 
 Rev. #2: "cic22" edited file "C:\DOCUME~1\phamill\LOCALS~1\
                            ...\Temp\AutoRecovery save of Iraq - security.asd"
 Rev. #3: "cic22" edited file "C:\DOCUME~1\phamill\LOCALS~1\
                            ...\Temp\AutoRecovery save of Iraq - security.asd" 
 Rev. #4: "JPratt" edited file "C:\TEMP\Iraq - security.doc" 
 
 Rev. #5: "JPratt" edited file "A:\Iraq - security.doc" 

 Rev. #6: "ablackshaw" edited file "C:\ABlackshaw\Iraq - security.doc" 

 Rev. #7: "ablackshaw" edited file "C:\ABlackshaw\A;Iraq - security.doc"

 Rev. #8: "ablackshaw" edited file "A:\Iraq - security.doc" 

 Rev. #9: "MKhan" edited file "C:\TEMP\Iraq - security.doc"   

 Rev. #10: "MKhan" edited file "C:\WINNT\Profiles\mkhan\Desktop\Iraq.doc"


      "Most Word document files contain a revision log which is a listing of 
      the last 10 edits of a document, showing the names of the people who 
      worked with the document and the names of the files that the document went 
      under. Revision logs are hidden and cannot be viewed in Microsoft Word. 
      However I wrote a small utility for extracting and displaying revision 
      logs and other hidden information in Word .DOC files.  
      "It is easy to spot the following four names in the revision log of the 
      Blair dossier: 
      
        P. Hamill

        J. Pratt

        A. Blackshaw

        M. Khan 
      
      "In addition, the "cic22" in the first three entries of the revision log 
      stands for "Communications Information Centre," a unit of the British 
      Government. 
      "During the week of June 23, 2003, the British Parliament held hearings 
      of the Blair Dossier and other PR efforts by the UK Government leading up 
      to the Iraq war. Alastair Campbell of the UK Communications Information 
      Centre was put in the hot seat and had to explain the dossier plagiarism 
      and details of the revision log.  
      "One of the interesting tidbits that came out of the hearings is that 
      John Pratt provided the dossier on a floppy disk to Alison Blackshaw to 
      give to Colin Powell for his presentation before the United Nations. 
      The 
      revision log shows the document being copied from Pratt's hard drive to a 
      floppy disk in revisions #4 and #5.  
      "The Blair government learned its lesson well with regard to publishing 
      Microsoft Word documents. Another report on Iraq that was published in 
      June 2003 was only available as a PDF file. 
      "As a general rule, Word document files which are converted to RTF 
      files, HTML files, or PDF files will not contain revision logs and other 
      metadata." [end]

So what we see here is just one of many of the "privacy vulnerabilities" that occurs in Microsoft Office products. Generally these add-on features are designed to be user friendly to assist people in making the most of their computer software.

However, ease of use can often become a confidential nightmare for people, especially when we don't really know what is going on behind the scenes in this type of technology.

Now Microsoft make excellent products for the average person, but it is critical today for people at home or in the small business office to be aware of the many security and privacy vulnerabilities lurking silently on your computer.

Please see this site for more information about today's Internet Privacy Risks and Windows security flaws

The latest version of Evidence Eliminator 5.058 addresses even more of these security risks in Windows and MS Office 2003 in particular.

For more information please browse these links or check the site menu on the top right of this page.

Why is secure file deletion so critical for personal computer privacy?

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