Investor’s Business Daily just published an article describing how documents — like those created in Word & Acrobat — may reveal more information than the authors intended:
"‘Dirty documents’" have become another surprise glitch of the computer age.
"A dirty document is, in fact, most items written in two of the most popular formats there are: Microsoft’s Word and Adobe Systems’ Acrobat, which includes the PDF format.
"Word and Acrobat, as simply one of their normal features, can retain all early versions of any document [PDF link]. So all changes and notes made by document writers could be viewed by most anyone — unless this feature is turned off or some other measures taken.
"In many cases, the feature is automatically off. But not always. And it’s fair to say a large number of users don’t know about this feature, to their occasional embarrassment — or worse."
Kudos if you knew this already!