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Whether you are a computer forensics examiner or a litigation support professional you should be aware of the hidden information inside Microsoft Word documents. Metadata is hidden data which reveals when a document was created, saved, printed, last 10 authors/locations and several other characteristics. Since files are potential evidence and the timeline of events as well as what happen to the evidence is important it is easy to understand how metadata can help win or lose a case depending on whether or not the files belong to your client and what they contain. Several file types contain metadata; however, the topic of this paper is to understand how Microsoft Office metadata is relevant to a civil litigation. Now, you may ask what about email 'metadata'? In a legal case many think of emails when referring to metadata. Often the fields (i.e. 'To', 'CC', 'From', 'Date Sent' etc.) are referred to as metadata. Actually, these are database fields as oppose to the hidden information in files. In addtion to Microsoft office Word metadata there is file system metadata. File system metadata is stored outside of the Microsoft Word. The date, time, size and other information displayed in Microsoft Windows is referred to the file system metadata and is store in the File Allocation Table (FAT). When this data is altered through a copy process it is often referred to as 'spoliation' in a legal case. Spoliation can cause important evidence to be thrown out when it is argued the files were altered during collection. Since the job of the collection phase is to preserve potential evidence spoliation can be a serious issue. Pinpoint Labs created a program called SafeCopy to allow users to copy files without altering metadata. What data is contained in Microsoft Word metadata fields? Here is a list of the commond metadata fields: MICROSOFT WORD METADATA FIELDS- File Name, Title, Author, Comments, App Name, Version Date, Created Date, Last Printed, Date Last Saved, Total Edit Time, Template, Shared, Subject, Category, Company, Keywords, Manager, Last Saved By, Word Count,Routing SlipTrack Changes, Fast Saves, Hidden text, Graphics Hyperlinks, Document Variables, Include Fields, Page Count, Paragraph Count, Line Count, Character Count, Chars, Byte Count, Presentation Format, Slide CountNote Count, Hidden Slides, Multimedia Clips, Last 10 Authors. A program which can quickly display information related to file system and Microsoft Office metadata is available through Pinpoint Labs and is called MetaViewer. MetaViewer is a great tools for computer forensic examiners and legal professionals who need to quickly view metadata and hash values. You can download MetaViewer from the Pinpoint Labs website.
Article Source: http://www.articleselections.com
About the author: Jon Rowe is the President of Pinpoint Labs and a Certified Computer Examiner. To learn more about Pinpoint Labs click herePinpoint Labs Website - Computer Forensics Software and Services
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