A 2004 article in Law Technology News entitled Metadata: Are you Protected? raised awareness of the dangers of metadata. It was one of the reasons why I’ve been so fearful of metadata in PDF documents. But thankfully, I’ve been pointed to a blog post on PDF For Lawyers that helps allay my fears and points out that the threat of metadata in PDF documents is overstated.
Many lawyers know about metadata in word processing files. The way that attorneys often solve this problem is by converting the Word document to a PDF file and sending that file to their adversary.
The ‘tracked changes’ in Word do not ordinarily pass into a PDF file when the word processing document is converted. It can happen, but it takes unusual conditions.
If the person who converted the Word document attached the Word file into the PDF in its native format then the ‘tracked changes’ will come through. It’s important to set up your printing configuration so you do not print ‘tracked changes’ along with the document.
