How to clear the private data in the file under Linux

The files and pictures we usually create contain a lot of information, which is easy to be used, so the metadata in the file should be cleared to protect personal privacy. The following small series will introduce you how to clear the privacy data in the file, let's learn together.

A typical data file is usually associated with "metadata", which contains descriptive information for this file, represented as a collection of attribute-values. Metadata typically includes the creator name, the tool that generated the file, the file creation/modification period, the creation location, and the edit history. Several popular metadata standards include EXIF ​​(pictures), RDF (web resources), and DOI (digital documents).

While metadata has its advantages in data management, it actually jeopardizes your privacy. The EXIF ​​format data in the camera image reveals identifiable personal information such as camera model, camera-related GPS coordinates, and user-friendly photo editing software. Metadata in documents and spreadsheets contains author/subordinate information and related edit history. Not necessarily so absolute, but metadata collection tools such as metagoofil are often used most as part of intrusion testing in the process of information collection.

For those users who want to erase all personal metadata from the shared data, there are some ways to remove metadata from data files. You can use existing document or photo editing software, usually with its own metadata editing features. In this tutorial, I'll introduce a nice, separate metadata cleanup tool with one goal: anonymous all private metadata.

MAT (Metadata Anonymous Toolbox) is a professional metadata cleaner written in Python. It is part of Tor's project and is a standard application for Live's privacy-enhanced operating system Trails.

Compared to tools such as exiftool that can only write to a limited variety of file types, MAT supports the elimination of metadata from a variety of files: images (png, jpg), documents (odt) , docx, pptx, xlsx, and pdf), archive files (tar, tar.bz2), and audio (mp3, ogg, flac), etc.

Installing MAT on Linux

On Debian-based systems (Ubuntu or Linux Mint), MAT is already packaged, so the installation is straightforward:

$ sudo apt- Get install mat

On Fedora, there is no pre-generated MAT package, so you need to generate it from source. This is my step of generating MAT on Fedora (if you are unsuccessful, please see the bottom of the tutorial):

$ sudo yum install python-devel intltool python-pdfrw perl-Image-ExifTool python-mutagen$ sudo pip install Hachoir-core hachoir-parser$ wget https://mat.boum.org/files/mat-0.5.tar.xz$ tar xf mat-0.5.tar.xz$ cd mat-0.5$ python setup.py install

Anonymous Metadata with MAT-GUI

Once installed, MAT can be used from both the GUI and the command line. Enter this command to start the MAT GUI:

$ mat-gui

Try to clean up an instance document file (such as private.odt) that contains the following built-in metadata.

Click & ldquo; Add & rdquo; button to add the need to clean up the files to the MAT. Once the file is loaded, click the “Confirm” button to scan all hidden metadata information.
Previous123Next page Total 3 pages