[silentway]

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The author object member is a standard PDF field. It's embedded by most software which generates PDFs, not just OSX. It's not a security flaw, it's a feature of the PDF standard.

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The existense of an author field is fine, and I've got no beef with it being a part of the PDF standard.
My problem is with the choice to populate that field with the OS X user's login name. This compromises the security of the computer because it gives away half of the info needed to login to your computer (the other half of course being your passsword).
A safer choice would be to pull the first and last name from Address Book's "My Card." Or better yet, allow us to change the source location via Terminal.
And just because it is "embedded by most software which generates PDFs" doesn't make a good idea.

[Pixelgun]

The flip side of this coin is that saving your name in the PDF could be considered a feature if you are sharing documents for which you want credit. Of course, if anyone can just open the file in a text editor and change the information it would also be easy to change the author credit information.

[Netizen_Kane]

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Since the PDF information is not encoded but written in plain ascii in the pdf file. You can easily remove it by editing the file using any text editor (such as vi, for exampe). This is certainly easier than having to log in as a different user every time you want to save a PDF.

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It would be wise to try out solutions before saying they're "easy." Do you think we're all technophobes who can't think for ourselves? Before I settled on the new account solution, I already tried removing the name from the field using TextWrangler and it does not work. The file becomes unreadable by either Preview or Adobe Reader, although it's still a PDF and they both still try to open the file. I'm guessing there's some kind of checksum error protection in the PDF format so you can't just go in there and change raw text.

[HandyMac]

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Can't you just open the pdf with Combine PDFs (http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/index.shtml), delete the author's name, and save it?

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Works for me. Easier than creating a new account. Thanks for the tip.

[fizik]

Worked for me...

[fizik]

That also works

[sparky67]

If you have a copy of Acrobat Professional you can edit the author as well as some of the other meta data by looking at Document Properties, Command-D

[DKG]

OK - so what am I missing here? I create a LOT of PDFs from the Print Dialog. If I look at them with a Get Info request I see nothing that would compromise my identity. The Ownership and Permissions pane shows my short login name, but I can't see how that creates any exposure or vulnerability. What am I missing?

[sparky67]

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OK - so what am I missing here? I create a LOT of PDFs from the Print Dialog. If I look at them with a Get Info request I see nothing that would compromise my identity. The Ownership and Permissions pane shows my short login name, but I can't see how that creates any exposure or vulnerability. What am I missing?

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Inside the "more info" section of the Get Info window is the meta data. The second item, author, is your login name.

[silentway]

Open up the pdf in Preview first, then do a get info (Tools-->Get Info or cmd-I). That shows more details.
In Acrobat Reader it's File--> Document Properties (cmd-D).

[griffman]

Also, some apps don't seem to store the Author information; Word and the other Office apps do...
-rob.

[HandyMac]

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Can't you just open the pdf with Combine PDFs (http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/index.shtml), delete the author's name, and save it?

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Works for me. Easier than creating a new account. Thanks for the tip.

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OOPS - Unfortunately, while this method works to delete the author name, it also kills live html links, such as those you can put into a PDF by creating it from Pages. They still appear blue & underlined in Preview, but they don't work anymore.
So: Use the Combine PDFs method only on PDFs with no links in them. Sigh

[gobear]

I made also a "normal" pdf from a word-document. The result: Size 1.2 MB. After that I tried the "compressed"-way. Some PDF info disappeared but the size was also compressed. Size: 248 kb, with the same file. Now I'm asthonished.

[celiawessen]

In Mac OS X 10.5, the "Save As PDF-X" option will actually embed your account's shortname into the Author field. The save dialog does not show that it will do this, unlike the regular "Save As PDF" option. Now THAT is a security flaw.