Adding metadata removal option for the attachments in outgoing messages

[Félix Brezo]

As I am a bit concerned relating data leakages due to metadata, I think that it may be a good option to add a metadata removal option to pantheon-mail by making use of the exiftool package:

# Install from repositories
sudo apt-get install exif
# Calling it to remove any metadata in a file
exiftool -all= example.pdf

This could be used to prevent data leakages if by checking an option in the preferences menu the user can automatically select to remove ALL the metadata in the files attached. In fact there are commercial services that provide companies plugins of this type for commercial applications such as Microsoft Outlook.

[Félix Brezo (febrezo)]

After posting, I'm thinking that it may be useful to add such an option to the contextual menus that appear in pantheon-files: "Remove metadata from file" to manually clean them from photos, office docs and .pdf amongst others. Just a thought.

[ceg (ceg)]

A good rule is, your cup of coffee should not leak by default.
Thus, your messages should only optionally leak metadata.

Mail programs should not put their name and version identification into each message.
You may answer if someone asks for it, if appropriate.

Sending metadata only if explicitly requested seems like the correct thing to do.

[Félix Brezo (febrezo)]

A more radical approach that i also share, but as this could lead to problems, I would add an option to globally send them or not by default as some users may need to add them. I'm not sure about whether the approach is a sort of an extension or to include it as the functionalities of the mail client, but I tend to feel more on the side of including it as a built-in action.

[Félix Brezo (febrezo)]

Debian package mat could be used to help with this issue. The package is maintained by the Tails and Tor project guys. It can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install mat