FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: Microsoft Word and Excel track users, invade privacy

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 14:47:01 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Copies to: rms@privacyfoundation.org Subject: FC: Microsoft Word and Excel track users, invade privacy Send reply to: declan@well.com

[This is a good reason not to use Microsoft Word or other snoopable software. I wonder if there's a way to turn this off (short of unplugging your network connection), or if not, whether Microsoft will release a fix for those of us who aren't thrilled about this feature. --Declan]

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From: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@privacyfoundation.org> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@well.com> Subject: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 10:55:13 -0400 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)

Hi,

The Privacy Foundation has just released an advisory on an issue that we discovered earlier this month in Microsoft Word. We found that it is possible to embedded "Web bugs" in Word documents. The Web bugs allow the author of a document to track via the Internet where a document is being read. The trick could be used to monitor leaks of confidential documents from a organization to outsiders as well as detecting copyright violations. In addition, it is also possible to place Web bugs in individual paragraphs and detect when the text is copied from one Word document to another.

The complete advisory is available at the Foundation's Web site:

http://www.privacyfoundation.org/advisories/advWordBugs.html

A demonstration "bugged" document for Word 97 and Word 2000 has been set up at:

http://www.privacycenter.du.edu/demos/bugged.doc

We also found that Excel 2000 spreadsheet files and PowerPoint 2000 slideshows can be "bugged" in the same manner.

Richard

================================================ Richard M. Smith Phone: (617) 962-8351 Chief Technology Officer FAX: (617) 731-5572 Privacy Foundation

Email: rms@privacyfoundation.org http://www.privacyfoundation.org ================================================

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