Wow, we’ve talked about securing metadata in the past, but this one takes the cake.
Notes from a meeting of the World Motor Sports Council were released recently by the FIA. The document was redacted, as you can see from the example below:
However, as F1Fanatic found out, simply copying and pasting the text into another document reveals the redacted text. In this case, I simply copied the text into Word:
Nigel TOZZI
He was paid around 300 000 to 400 000 pounds per annum. Is that correct?
Apparently, the person responsible for redacting the document simply drew a black box around the sensitive text, not realizing that the underlying text was still available. I feel a bit sorry for the poor sod who did this. Simply copy-protecting the PDF would have prevented this type of thing from occurring.
The PDF (at the time of this posting) is still up, here. I’ve also archived a copy here.
Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks Francesco)