#Mkvtools remove metadata how to
#Mkvtools remove metadata install
#Mkvtools remove metadata software

To see a list of all supported file types, run: $ mat -lĬurrently I have the following issue with a compiled version of MAT on Fedora. The following command cleans up all files, and stores original files as *.bak files. If you want to keep a backup of original files during cleanup, use -b option. If you don't supply any option with mat command, the default action is to remove metadata from files. You can check actual metadata detected by using -d option: $ mat -d It will scan all files in the current directory and its sub directories, and report their state (clean or unclean). To check for any sensitive metadata, first go to the directory where your files are located, and then run: $ mat -c.

The cleaned up state is without any personally identifiable traces: Anonymize Metadata from the Command LineĪs mentioned before, another way to invoke MAT is from the command line, and for that, use mat command. MAT will automatically empty all private metadata fields from the file. To clean up metadata from the file, click on Clean icon. You can double click the file to see detected metadata. Once any metadata is detected by MAT, State will be marked as Dirty. Once the file is loaded, click on Check icon to scan for any hidden metadata information. To add the file to MAT for cleanup, click on Add icon. Let's clean up a sample document file (e.g., private.odt) which has the following metadata embedded. To launch MAT's GUI, simply type: $ mat-gui Once installed, MAT can be accessible via GUI as well as from the command line.

#Mkvtools remove metadata install

$ sudo pip install hachoir-core hachoir-parser Here is how I built MAT on Fedora (with some limited success see the bottom of the tutorial): $ sudo yum install python-devel intltool python-pdfrw perl-Image-ExifTool python-mutagen On Fedora, MAT does not come as a pre-built package, so you need to build it from the source. On Debian-based systems (Ubuntu or Linux Mint), MAT comes packaged, so installation is straightforward: $ sudo apt-get install mat It was developed under the umbrella of the Tor project, and comes standard on Tails, privacy-enhanced live OS.Ĭompared to other tools such as exiftool which can write to only a limited number of file types, MAT can eliminate metadata from all kinds of files: images (png, jpg), documents (odt, docx, pptx, xlsx, pdf), archives (tar, tar.bz2), audio (mp3, ogg, flac), etc.

MAT (Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit) is a dedicated metadata cleaner written in Python. In this tutorial, let me introduce a nice standalone metadata cleaner tool which is developed for a single goal: anonymize all metadata for your privacy.

#Mkvtools remove metadata software

You can use existing document or image editor software which typically have built-in metadata editing capability. Not to be paranoid, but metadata gathering tools such as metagoofil are often exploited during information gathering stage as part of penetration testing.įor those of you who want to strip any personalizing metadata from any shared data, there are ways to remove metadata from data files. Metadata in documents and spreadsheets contain author/affiliation information and other editing history. For example, EXIF metadata in photo images can reveal personally identifiable information such as your camera model, GPS coordinate of shooting, your favorite photo editor software, etc. While metadata has its own merits for data management purposes, it can actually affect your privacy adversely. EXIF (images), RDF (web resources), DOI (digital documents) are some of popular metadata standards. Common metadata include creator's name, tools used to generate the file, file creation/update date, location of creation, editing history, etc.

#Mkvtools remove metadata how to

How to remove file metadata for your privacy on LinuxĪ typical data file often has associated metadata which is descriptive information about the file, represented in the form of a set of name-value pairs.