Augmenting Privacy through Metadata Wiping
Simon Lowry · NORMA · 2023
Metadata has become increasingly prevalent with the explosion of big data. The effects of its collation have meagerly been brought to public discourse and is capitalized upon by those know how. The lack of public understanding creates a numb disinterest in metadata. This asymmetry creates a breathing ground for exploit with those sufficient knowledge. Metadata and it’s spread of harms has been direly under researched. Tools created have often been limited in scope with considerations sometimes to the detriment of their very intent to provide increased security. This paper and tool has sought to rectify these issues. It looks to provide a universally accessible tool to cover multiple file types to help sustain privacy for individuals and organisations alike. This will help in protecting intellectual property, sensitive information whether it be PII, PHI or litigation documents or classified information which can persist in files. It shows the dangers of why tools like this are becoming increasingly important in a world where passive and exposed surveillance have become more and more all-encompassing. It exposes the asymmetry that exists between those who know how to make use of this information and how that’s being exploited. It identifies where other current tools and state of the art research papers have been lacking and proposes a solution which improves on current work. It aims to increase the awareness of why it matters to care about metadata.