Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Adds Risky System-Wide Undelete to Vista
douder writes "Windows Vista will have a new 'previous versions' feature when it ships next year. According to Ars Technica, the
feature is built off of the volume shadow copy technology from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Now turned on by default, the service stores the modified versions of a user's documents, even after they are deleted. They also report that you can browse folders from within Explorer to see snapshots of what they contained over time. It can be disabled, but this seems like a privacy concern." From the article: "Some users will find the feature objectionable because it could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees, or perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person. Previous versions of Windows were still susceptible to undelete utilities, of course, but this new functionality makes browsing quite, quite simple. On the other hand, it should be noted that 'Previous Versions' does not store its data in the files themselves. That is, unlike Microsoft Office's 'track changes,' files protected with 'Previous Versions' will not carry their documentary history with them."
That feature is seriously screwed up. Microsoft are *still* trying to sell people on the idea that its ok to share around the editable document, when in reality its hardly ever ok. All it takes is for one person to forget to remove hidden data and you're on the news.
Look at the list of Office products it integrates with - there's one missing. Outlook. Why isn't outlook set up to prompt you to ask if it should strip the documents before sending? Why is there no feature on exchange to block emails leaving the domain with unstripped attachments? Why doesn't iis block access to unstripped files? Now those would make it a feature worth having.
Stepping back from MS for a moment, the same problem actually exists in many other file types - even html (meta tags and comments). Its why the microformats movement thinks metadata should be presentable and parsable rather than hidden in 'document properties'. Their solution isn't complete though - we need to separate the notions of 'Save As' and 'Publish'. One way to achieve this in a corporate/government environment would be for servers to require digital signatures on outgoing documents - this would introduce publication into a document lifecycle for the purpose of integrity, at which point we can hook in 'strip doc' wizards to minimize risk.
Just thinking out loud.