Microsoft attaches a GUID to all Office documents!

	Take your Pick: Home Articles Band Education Fun Stuff Links Merchandise NetTalk Reviews Speaking Writing		Microsoft Attaches an ID to all Office Documents! March 8, 1999 LISTEN! to Dave's radio Interview on privacy while you read! Turmoil over your computer having a unique serial number began this year with the Pentium III scuttle. Intel incorporated a feature that was meant to enhance e-commerce by embedding a unique serial identifier into the brain of your computer, the CPU. This serial ID could be enabled to allow online retailers to poll your system during a transaction to see if it was really you trying to buy an item with your credit card. In the past, it was too difficult to put an ID within the millions of shipped CPU's, motherboards, or other system board components. Refinements in the manufacturing process have finally led Intel to this ability today. Consumer outcry first led Intel to disable this feature in software, and once that was defeated by a German programmer, Dell and Gateway offered hardware disabling through the motherboard BIOS, or Basic Input Output System. Microsoft has had the same problem with CD-ROM software distribution that the earlier CPU's had: It is too costly to put a unique ID on every CD that is pressed. Because of this, software manufacturers must put a license ID card within the shrink-wrapped software, which contains a code that you must enter into your computer during the installation process. Once this code is entered, it stays within your computer right? Well, not always. Now it seems that this number is being attached to Excel and Word 97 documents from users of Windows 95, 98, and even the securely touted Windows NT operating system. To locate the information being passed, open a copy of the DOS provided EDIT command under any operating system except NT (NT will NOT show you the GUID string) and open a .DOC that you have created under Word. Versions 6 and below show that the document was created under Word 6, but will not contain the additional line "_PID_GUID" which contains your software registration number, and the hardware MAC address of your Ethernet card - a VERY unique serial ID! While CPU's have not technically needed a unique identifier, Ethernet cards have. From the beginning of networking, a MAC or Media Access Control number was encoded into the Ethernet hardware in your computer. This MAC address is not sent out over the Internet, because it is first converted to an IP address. Your system administrator and network managers however, do see the traffic going over your network at the MAC level. What does this mean? If you send a document or spreadsheet to that you created with Word or Excel to someone they can see your registration ID and MAC address of your Ethernet card. They can also see how many revisions of this document you made, how long it took you to create it, and even UN-DO changes that you have made from it as all of this is stored, although hidden, within the document. You wondered why your data files had been getting larger over the years, and this is why! Note that these "identifiers" do not show up under Word or Excel directly, however a DOS based Text editor or drive sector utility will show this information for those tortured souls who really want to know. Once they find out your MAC address, there is not much they can do with it if they are outside of your Local Area Network. If they are inside of your network however, spoofing and security issues do arise. These are problems that your network administrators should know how to handle. For the former reasons of saved revisions, notice of editing length, and the ability to UNDO ALONE I rarely send documents as attachments! If I do, I always start from scratch as I would NEVER want anyone to UNDO the proposal I have made for them to find another proposal buried below! If you MUST edit a file to create a new one, you can mask this with the following trick. Make your "work" file and once you finish it cut the text out of your work document, and paste it into a brand new document. Save the new document as your "final" and email it off. Your co-workers will be amazed that you only took five minutes to create that wonderful letter you just sent them and they will wonder why you made no mistakes for them to undo! Since the Internet does not communicate at the MAC level, even if you email an attachment of a document or spreadsheet that you created with Word or Excel and a hacker gets a copy of it, nothing terrible will happen. Your browser does NOT pay attention to your MAC, so your church group will not be able to see the other sites you head off to when you are not surfing for your savior. MAC's are really only important at the Local Area Network internal company level. They are put in place so network administrators can see what devices are taking up resources, or causing conflicts as they broadcast their true MAC ID rather than a name maintained by the operating system of your PC or network device. The Pentium III stir was due to the fact that the browser would become CPU ID "aware" and could broadcast its unique identification. I will however, become worried if the next version of Internet Explorer 5 begins to broadcast my GUID along with my MAC address - something which is as unique as a PIII CPU ID. Until the 5.0 software release when we can become aware by researching; we are roughly "anonymous" for now with our 4.0 browsers. Windows 98 includes a unique utility that Windows 95 and NT do not have called the Registration Wizard. To run this utility, type REGWIZ from the Start, Run prompt. If you wish to upgrade your copy of Windows 98 with the Windows Update utility, WUPDMGR.EXE, you must first use the RegWiz to successfully register your software. As a part of this registration process Microsoft gets a copy of the Windows 98 registration number you entered into your operating system during the initial installation, and attached to that is your hardware MAC address from your Ethernet adapter. Now Microsoft has a copy of your VERY unique serial identification number. Microsoft stated publicly that they did not know this was occurring, and that they are looking into whether this data is archived or not. Now that you have read this, have some fun by locating your MAC address. Here's how! Under Windows 95/98 Click Start Select Run Type WINIPCFG Select your adapter (PPP if you have a Modem, or your Ethernet card) Adapter Address will show you your MAC address. Under Windows NT Open a DOS Window Type IPCONFIG /ALL Physical Address will show you your MAC address. If you know your way around the Windows Registry Editor utility, load it and search for your MAC address. You will be AMAZED at how often, and which programs lock into it! Even the AltaVista Discovery software I used months ago as a search engine had latched onto it! Now this is scary as AltaVista DIRECTLY connects to the Internet! What does Compaq want my MAC address for? Hmmm.. I've got it! Compaq sells Microsoft all of the servers and hard drives that collect our GUID and MAC address during the Win98 registration process, and Compaq has the job of "third party auditing" of this for Microsoft! Or maybe Compaq just uses this information to forecast the number of systems they will be selling to the software giant in the future! So casual computer users and net surfers do not be too worried, don't send Bill Gates a document as an attachment, and enjoy the net! If it really bothers you, go back to Word 6.0 which is immune to the GUID document transfer problem, and don't use the Windows Registration Wizard until the "patch" is released which will not send the GUID to Redmond. On another note, now that I started to "re-engineer" my MAC address within the Windows registry, I get a new message when I run RegWiz: The Registration Wizard cannot run because the information it requires from the system is either unavailable or incorrect. Looks like I beat Bill! http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/ - Find the patches to turn the Office identifiers off here! Dave Mathews, Copyright 1999, all rights reserved. www.davemathews.com --- Dave is a speaker, writer, and personality on NetTalk Live! a weekly program broadcast around the world on Television, Radio and the Internet. Dave’s articles on technology can be found weekly on the NetTalk Live web-site at www.nettalklive.com online. Check the NetTalk "On-Air" page for show air times in your city! If you wish to book Dave on your program, email interview@davemathews.com with your request.

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Microsoft Attaches an ID to all Office Documents!

March 8, 1999

LISTEN! to Dave's radio Interview on privacy while you read!

Turmoil over your computer having a unique serial number began this year with the Pentium III scuttle. Intel incorporated a feature that was meant to enhance e-commerce by embedding a unique serial identifier into the brain of your computer, the CPU. This serial ID could be enabled to allow online retailers to poll your system during a transaction to see if it was really you trying to buy an item with your credit card.

In the past, it was too difficult to put an ID within the millions of shipped CPU's, motherboards, or other system board components. Refinements in the manufacturing process have finally led Intel to this ability today. Consumer outcry first led Intel to disable this feature in software, and once that was defeated by a German programmer, Dell and Gateway offered hardware disabling through the motherboard BIOS, or Basic Input Output System.

Microsoft has had the same problem with CD-ROM software distribution that the earlier CPU's had: It is too costly to put a unique ID on every CD that is pressed. Because of this, software manufacturers must put a license ID card within the shrink-wrapped software, which contains a code that you must enter into your computer during the installation process. Once this code is entered, it stays within your computer right? Well, not always.

Now it seems that this number is being attached to Excel and Word 97 documents from users of Windows 95, 98, and even the securely touted Windows NT operating system. To locate the information being passed, open a copy of the DOS provided EDIT command under any operating system except NT (NT will NOT show you the GUID string) and open a .DOC that you have created under Word. Versions 6 and below show that the document was created under Word 6, but will not contain the additional line "_PID_GUID" which contains your software registration number, and the hardware MAC address of your Ethernet card - a VERY unique serial ID!

While CPU's have not technically needed a unique identifier, Ethernet cards have. From the beginning of networking, a MAC or Media Access Control number was encoded into the Ethernet hardware in your computer. This MAC address is not sent out over the Internet, because it is first converted to an IP address. Your system administrator and network managers however, do see the traffic going over your network at the MAC level.

What does this mean?
If you send a document or spreadsheet to that you created with Word or Excel to someone they can see your registration ID and MAC address of your Ethernet card. They can also see how many revisions of this document you made, how long it took you to create it, and even UN-DO changes that you have made from it as all of this is stored, although hidden, within the document. You wondered why your data files had been getting larger over the years, and this is why!

Note that these "identifiers" do not show up under Word or Excel directly, however a DOS based Text editor or drive sector utility will show this information for those tortured souls who really want to know. Once they find out your MAC address, there is not much they can do with it if they are outside of your Local Area Network. If they are inside of your network however, spoofing and security issues do arise. These are problems that your network administrators should know how to handle.

For the former reasons of saved revisions, notice of editing length, and the ability to UNDO ALONE I rarely send documents as attachments! If I do, I always start from scratch as I would NEVER want anyone to UNDO the proposal I have made for them to find another proposal buried below! If you MUST edit a file to create a new one, you can mask this with the following trick. Make your "work" file and once you finish it cut the text out of your work document, and paste it into a brand new document. Save the new document as your "final" and email it off. Your co-workers will be amazed that you only took five minutes to create that wonderful letter you just sent them and they will wonder why you made no mistakes for them to undo!

Since the Internet does not communicate at the MAC level, even if you email an attachment of a document or spreadsheet that you created with Word or Excel and a hacker gets a copy of it, nothing terrible will happen. Your browser does NOT pay attention to your MAC, so your church group will not be able to see the other sites you head off to when you are not surfing for your savior. MAC's are really only important at the Local Area Network internal company level. They are put in place so network administrators can see what devices are taking up resources, or causing conflicts as they broadcast their true MAC ID rather than a name maintained by the operating system of your PC or network device.

The Pentium III stir was due to the fact that the browser would become CPU ID "aware" and could broadcast its unique identification. I will however, become worried if the next version of Internet Explorer 5 begins to broadcast my GUID along with my MAC address - something which is as unique as a PIII CPU ID. Until the 5.0 software release when we can become aware by researching; we are roughly "anonymous" for now with our 4.0 browsers.

Windows 98 includes a unique utility that Windows 95 and NT do not have called the Registration Wizard. To run this utility, type REGWIZ from the Start, Run prompt. If you wish to upgrade your copy of Windows 98 with the Windows Update utility, WUPDMGR.EXE, you must first use the RegWiz to successfully register your software. As a part of this registration process Microsoft gets a copy of the Windows 98 registration number you entered into your operating system during the initial installation, and attached to that is your hardware MAC address from your Ethernet adapter. Now Microsoft has a copy of your VERY unique serial identification number. Microsoft stated publicly that they did not know this was occurring, and that they are looking into whether this data is archived or not.

Now that you have read this, have some fun by locating your MAC address. Here's how!

Under Windows 95/98

Click Start
Select Run
Type WINIPCFG
Select your adapter (PPP if you have a Modem, or your Ethernet card)
Adapter Address will show you your MAC address.

Under Windows NT

Open a DOS Window
Type IPCONFIG /ALL
Physical Address will show you your MAC address.

If you know your way around the Windows Registry Editor utility, load it and search for your MAC address. You will be AMAZED at how often, and which programs lock into it! Even the AltaVista Discovery software I used months ago as a search engine had latched onto it! Now this is scary as AltaVista DIRECTLY connects to the Internet! What does Compaq want my MAC address for? Hmmm.. I've got it! Compaq sells Microsoft all of the servers and hard drives that collect our GUID and MAC address during the Win98 registration process, and Compaq has the job of "third party auditing" of this for Microsoft! Or maybe Compaq just uses this information to forecast the number of systems they will be selling to the software giant in the future!

So casual computer users and net surfers do not be too worried, don't send Bill Gates a document as an attachment, and enjoy the net! If it really bothers you, go back to Word 6.0 which is immune to the GUID document transfer problem, and don't use the Windows Registration Wizard until the "patch" is released which will not send the GUID to Redmond.

On another note, now that I started to "re-engineer" my MAC address within the Windows registry, I get a new message when I run RegWiz: The Registration Wizard cannot run because the information it requires from the system is either unavailable or incorrect. Looks like I beat Bill!

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/ - Find the patches to turn the Office identifiers off here!

---

Dave is a speaker, writer, and personality on NetTalk Live! a weekly program broadcast around the world on Television, Radio and the Internet. Dave’s articles on technology can be found weekly on the NetTalk Live web-site at www.nettalklive.com online. Check the NetTalk "On-Air" page for show air times in your city! If you wish to book Dave on your program, email interview@davemathews.com with your request.