Bogus digital signatures, Re: OT: utility account transfer frauds

[Ken Brown]

John R T Brazier wrote:
 
> [note] I actually love Word's Track Changes and Comments features. People
> always forget to delete them (they turn the view off, but don't remove the
> information). Many a time I have been privy to people's thoughts when they
> send me a document ...


I've had to deal with complaints from users who sent out Word
attachments with email and found that the recipient, using different
versions of Word, (very often on a Macintosh) could read text that the
senders thought had been deleted. In at least one case this was a
secretary editing a document from her boss to remove some very personal
comments about the final recipient.

I was in no case able to persuade them that the problem was with Word.
Boss insists secretary has made a mistake, secretary insists that there
must be something wrong with the PC. I show them that on my PC the
missing text is visible with a text editor but not Word, this is
meaningless to them. (And they completely ignored my advice to only use
plain text in email!)

I can't imagine anyone explaining to them the ins and outs of how the
change history of a Word document could be evidence that someone had
tampered with it to obfuscate a digital signature.  But they might be on
a jury one day.