Documents nowadays contain metadata – pieces information that are embedded into a file. These often help you in organizing your files or to easily search or share them over the Internet. However, with this, you might just be handing out a lot of information about yourself without even knowing it – just by sending documents from your computer. Some files (with documents as the more common ones), they actually contain metadata about you. Office documents can actually contain your full name. Good thing you can either add or erase them easily with Windows Vista options.

To add:

• Right-click a file and select Properties
• Select the Details tab
• Click across any one of the labels and key in the information that you want to put in
• Click OK

To erase:

• Right-click a file and select Properties
• Select the Details tab
• Click on the Remove Properties and Personal Information link at the bottom. Another dialog will pop up. This way you can either create a copy of the file with the metadata removed or select the information you want removed by enabling checkboxes.
• Click OK twice.