Sanitize PDFs - Metadata question

[Jonathan335798648syc]

I use Adobe Acrobat to protect sensitive information within documents daily. Part of that is removing the metadata. However, one my clients had concners about this and asked exatlcy what is considered metadata and I am not confident I could fully answer. What is everything Adobe considers as metadata and what is exactly being removed?

[try67]

There are two types of metadata properties in a PDF file, the PDF Properties and the XMP metadata.

You can find both under File - Properties - Description - Additional Metadata - Advanced.

Here's an example:

[try67]

The Sanitize command should delete both, of course.

[Abambo]

To be clear, metadata is everything that is not content. The definition of metadata is not dependent on what Adobe thinks that it is. Some of that metadata could effectively be sensitive. But not all metadata is sensitive.

If you sign a document, the electronic signature is also metadata, but it's required to determine the status of the signed document.