Everyone hears about it, but many don’t understand it. Metadata is akin to ‘the cloud’, with people saying “who understands it anyway?” Regardless of your profession, it is something you need to be aware of so that you can determine if you need to amend your behavior.
What is it? Metadata is data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data itself. What’s that mean? It is data about the data, and it is usually hidden. Metadata can include information such as:
- How, when, and by whom the data was collected
- How the data is formatted
- Revisions, and the associated dates
- Comments
- Template information
- File properties
- Summary information
- The document’s title, author name, subject, and keywords
- The purpose of the data
- The location of the data
- The file size
Does it really matter? It depends. If you don’t send anything externally and all your recipients are colleagues that know exactly how you work, then it’s probably not a problem that they are getting this data. If you are an attorney that reused a document as a template, it may be a big deal because you could be disclosing confidential information about another client unknowingly. Similarly, an attorney sending information to opposing counsel could unknowingly be providing sensitive information that could sink their client or case. If you are in business, your slide deck may include pricing schemes and discount tolerances in the presenter notes that you would never want to send to a client. If the document is a Word document with tracked changes and comments hidden, the recipient may unhide them and know exactly what the internal notes are, which may be unflattering or give away strategy.
On the flip side, if you are the recipient of information and want context or insight, looking at the meta data can be incredibly helpful. Knowing whether the document you are being sent was last saved a week ago or ten minutes ago may be helpful. Knowing who last saved or created the document may give you insight into which person you are actually negotiating with. Knowing when and where a picture was taken could make or break a case.
What can I do? You need to figure out whether the risk is worth the effort. If it has no effect on you either way, you may want to continue to do nothing and let whatever metadata exists to remain there. If you are redacting documents or sending out information during a deal, it may be incredibly important to remove the information. If you don’t know, you should talk to an expert to figure out what metadata exists in what you work with and then figure out how to systematically remove the information when you want to.
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