Meta Data

CCleaner for Windows CCleaner Windows Suggestions
1

I was wondering if there would be any interest in adding support to remove or clean meta data from groups of files like BatchPurifier can ?

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice.org documents, PDF documents, and popular image and media file types such as JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, SVG, AVI, WAVE, AIFF, MP3, MP4, and F4V.

To be honest cleaning meta data such as this is probably more important than cleaning free space as meta data is available to anyone and not just to someone forensically reading your free space.

Thank you.

2

I disagree with your priorities.

Banking details, Credit card numbers, etc. do not need forensic reading of free space - an amateur can use Recuva for that purpose.

I doubt that such details could be extracted from Metadata.

3

Thank you for your reply.

I still believe there is more risk from someone accidentally sending an uncleaned word document via e-mail, or sharing one via USB than someone illegally gaining access to my physical hard drive and searching the free space. I guess we both have different threat models.

Here are a couple of links which explain things better than I can. They describe and demonstrate real world scenarios where the cleanliness of the users free-space was of no significance, but my suggestion of meta data cleaning would have helped.

http://lawyerist.com/remove-metadata-with-batch-software/

http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm

4

Thank you.

I stand corrected.

However, from your links and their comments I came to

http://www.forensicon.com/resources/articles/an-ounce-of-prevention-is-worth-a-pound-of-cure-and-court-sanctions/

If a court orders discovery of documents there might be serious consequences if Meta Data has been damaged or erased.

5

Hi Alan

The link you kindly provided mentioned illegal activity by "several executives" trying to hide or cover up evidence of discrimination.

Simply using CCleaner in any of its current modes could be misconstrued as tampering with evidence by a court. In fact simply repeatedly copying a large file to your c drive "could" be implied as trying to wipe evidence from free space.

My request is to help defend innocent everyday users and ensure their privacy by protecting them from a common lapse in concentration, or even ignorance as to what information they send with their word files, jpgs, PDF's ..etc...

I don't think my feature request would be seen as any more suspicious or devious by a court than overwriting free space is already perceived as being.

I still consider this is a more common or more likely threat to a regular users privacy than data found in the free space of a hard drive.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for free space wiping and I perform a full pass regularly. It was just that I could not understand the order of priorities, which I assume we now agree on ?

Thank you for your interest in this subject, I see you are a regular poster here so I hope I have interested you enough to second my request.

6

I accept the validity of your concerns.

I am happy to support the wiping of any Meta Data belonging to files that are already wiped or even deleted - if indeed such Meta Data can be identified.

I think however Meta Data should not be automatically removed whilst its "parent" file still exists, because the user may still need that information.

Sorry, going off topic - In my view the embarrassment of Tony Blair was a good thing :P

7

Can we agree that the meta data for an existing file, or group of, "could" be removed if the user requests it ?

I believe it is still important to provide this option as I can think of many situations that would benefit from this additional privacy. It is important to distinguish privacy from criminal activity. Ccleaner is a privacy tool, not a criminals tool.

As for your off topic comment, from a shaky start it would seem we are finding common ground !! :)

8

I agree that it could be a useful option for those who understand it and need it.

It might however upset naive users who lose their revision history etc because they thought every check box would give them more free space.

There was one who seemed to think 35 pass wiping would give 35 times as much extra free space :rolleyes:

9

Ah yes the dreaded "user error".

There are already many settings within ccleaner that can cause some data loss to an extent so I guess we are already living with this possibility.

I suggest a pop up warning like we get on some of the other settings may be called for. Looks like we have a plan !

:)