IP: The scary MSWord residue feature -- OLD PROBLEM but bears repeat Risks Digest 20.83

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 21:16:53 GMT
> From: rubin () research att com (Avi Rubin)
> Subject: The scary MSWord residue feature
>
> I recently received a legal document as part of a personal negotiation that
> I am doing. The document was e-mailed to me in MSWord format.  As I was
> showing it to my lawyer (who happens to be my wife), we decided to put our
> thoughts inline using the track changes feature of word. After selecting
> Tools, and Track Changes, we clicked on "Highlight changes in document" and
> voila, suddenly a whole bunch of red appeared on the screen. We looked at it
> closely and realized that everything in red represented changes in the
> document that my counterpart's lawyer had written. We got a good look at the
> previous version of the contract, as well as a bunch of comments and
> justifications that the lawyer wrote to his client. It was an eye opening
> experience.
>
> It appears that instead of selecting "Accept all changes" before sending it
> to me, the other party to the contract simply turned off the highlighting to
> the track changes feature.
>
> This is obviously a case of an unsophisticated person misusing a feature.
> However, it is very dangerous. Lawyers send word documents around all the
> time, and many of them do not really understand all the features that they
> use, nor should they have to. I imagine that I was not the first person to
> see some behind the scenes conversation in an important word document, that
> I was never intended to see.