In today’s fast-paced market we tend to rely heavily on e-mail for communicating and forwarding documents to clients and colleagues. But in this new age of electronic communications, are we aware of the level and type of information we are inadvertently revealing?
When forwarding documents in electronic format, apart from the text itself the document could potentially contain ‘metadata’ – data specifically relevant to that document and the firm, but not necessarily imperative to the recipients. This could include: audit and version history of the document; life cycle; hidden text and comments; template and file location and, in some cases, changes that have been made or deleted from the document.
