Re: [libreoffice-users] Problems with document metadata

If you refer to a string like this:

<meta:creation-date>2019-05-17T18:38:03.217585497</meta:creation-date><dc:date>2023-04-28T00:13:57.945871957</dc:date><meta:editing-duration>PT7M19S</meta:editing-duration><meta:editing-cycles>3</meta:editing-cycles><meta:generator>LibreOffice/7.5.3.1$Linux_X86_64 
LibreOffice_project/d29ee673721b12c92b3de9b9663473211414f0db</meta:generator>

This is a compulsory part of the ODF standard document file, which is 
stored in the document and provides info to the LibreOffice software 
when you open the file. It is in the meta.xml file.

If you rename your Lib reOffice file, replacing the extension with ZIP 
and unpack the resulting compressed file, you will find all the file 
elements in XML format. They are part of the standard.

They have nothing to do with telemetry or other sensitive data. They 
tell the software that the document has been created with LibreOffice on 
Linux (if the ODF document was created by MS Office on Windows it would 
have been a different string), and that it was created in 2019, edited 
in 2023, and opened 3 times.

I repeat, these are information which are part of the ODF document 
standard. You can manually edit them if you do not want to have them 
stored (the last version of LibreOffice even allows not to write them 
when saving a file) but this would not change the level of privacy and 
security of the file, which is the same (and is very high).

Best regards, Italo

On 08/10/24 16:28, knight1226 wrote:
> Hello Libreoffice Team,
>
> I have learned about metadata-induced privacy leak issue previously, and have been accustomed to wiping every file of 
> metadata after final edition. A few days ago I encountered an accidentally unbleached odt file when aimlessly scanning 
> my disk with exiftool, and I was shocked to find a line titled "generator", in a format just like, 
> "LibreOffice/[Libreoffice version]$[OS and arch] LibreOffice_project/[a long string made up of numbers and 
> letters]".
>
> I am worried, since while usually keeping the cleaning habit, I had the concept that as a free software known 
> for privacy-focus, libreoffice documents would not contain any telemetry or sensitive data by default. 
> However this time, I could not get rid of this generator line even with "Apply User Data" tickbox 
> unchecked, and at last I had to ask to violent means such as mat2. So, after some googles in vain, I would 
> appreciate it if someone could tell me what does this [a long string made up of numbers and letters] means, 
> and if this line contains anything like a hardware identifier or such.
>
> Eager for your early reply.
>
> Sincerely Yours

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Italo Vignoli - italo@vignoli.org
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GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0
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