spoliation

Ask the Magic 8-Ball; “Is Predictive Defensible Disposal Possible?”

Bill Tolson Information Management, records retention, Technology , , , , , , , , ,

The Good Ole Days of Paper Shredding

In my early career, shred days – the scheduled annual activity where the company ordered all employees to wander through all their paper records to determine what should be disposed of, were common place. At the government contractor I worked for, we actually wheeled our boxes out to the parking lot to a very large truck that had huge industrial shredders in the back. Once the boxes of documents were shredded, we were told to walk them over to a second truck, a burn truck, where we, as the records custodian, would actually verify that all of our records were destroyed. These shred days were a way to actually collect, verify and yes physically shred all the paper records that had gone beyond their retention period over the preceding year.

The Magic 8-Ball says Shred Days aren’t Defensible

Nowadays, this type of activity carries some negative connotations with it and is much more risky. Take for example the recent case of Rambus vs SK Hynix. In this case U.S District Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose reversed his own prior ruling from a 2009 case where he had originally issued a judgment against SK Hynix, awarding Rambus Inc. $397 million in a patent infringement case. In his reversal this year, Judge Whyte ruled that Rambus Inc. had spoliated documents in bad faith when it hosted company-wide “shred days” in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Judge Whyte found that Rambus could have reasonably foreseen litigation against Hynix as early as 1998, and that therefore Rambus engaged in willful spoliation during the three “shred days” (a finding of spoliation can be based on inadvertent destruction of evidence as well). Because of this recent spoliation ruling, the Judge reduced the prior Rambus award from $397 million to $215 million, a cost to Rambus of $182 million.

Another well know example of sudden retention/disposition policy activity that caused unintended consequences is the Arthur Andersen/Enron example. During the Enron case, Enron’s accounting firm sent out the following email to some of its employees:

This email was a key reason why Arthur Andersen ceased to exist shortly after the case concluded. Arthur Andersen was charged with and found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding the thousands of documents and deleting emails and company files that tied the firm to its audit of Enron. Less than 1 year after that email was sent, Arthur Andersen surrendered its CPA license on August 31, 2002, and 85,000 employees lost their jobs.

Learning from the Past – Defensible Disposal

These cases highlight the need for a true information governance process including a truly defensible disposal capability. In these instances, an information governance process would have been capturing, indexing, applying retention policies, protecting content on litigation hold and disposing of content beyond the retention schedule and not on legal hold… automatically, based on documented and approved legally defensible policies. A documented and approved process which is consistently followed and has proper safeguards goes a long way with the courts to show good faith intent to manage content and protect that content subject to anticipated litigation.

To successfully automate the disposal of unneeded information in a consistently defensible manner, auto-categorization applications must have the ability to conceptually understand the meaning in unstructured content so that only content meeting your retention policies, regardless of language, is classified as subject to retention.

Taking Defensible Disposal to the Next Level – Predictive Disposition

A defensible disposal solution which incorporates the ability to conceptually understand content meaning, and which incorporates an iterative training process including “train by example,” in a human supervised workflow provides accurate predictive retention and disposition automation.

Moving away from manual, employee-based information governance to automated information retention and disposition with truly accurate (95 to 99%) and consistent meaning-based predictive information governance will provide the defensibility that organizations require today to keep their information repositories up to date.

Defensible Disposal means never being accused of spoliation for hosting “Shred Days”

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, Information Management, records retention, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

U.S District Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose reversed his own prior ruling from a 2009 case where he issued a judgment against SK Hynix, awarding Rambus Inc. $397 million in a patent infringement case. In his reversal this month, Judge Whyte ruled that Rambus Inc. had spoliated documents in bad faith when it hosted company wide “shred days” in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Judge Whyte found that Rambus could have reasonably foreseen litigation against Hynix as early as 1998, and that therefore Rambus engaged in willful spoliation during the three “shred days” (a finding of spoliation can be based on inadvertent destruction of evidence). Because of this recent spoliation ruling, the Judge reduced the prior Rambus award from $397 million to $215 million, a cost to Rambus of $182 million.

Two questions come to mind in this case; 1) why did Rambus see the need to hold “shred days”?, and 2) did they have an information governance policy and defensible disposal process? As a matter of definition, defensible disposal is the process (manual or automated) of disposing of unneeded or valueless data in a way that will standup in court as reasonable and consistent.

The obvious answer to the second question is probably not or if yes, it wasn’t being followed, otherwise why the need for the shred days? Assuming that Rambus was not destroying evidence knowingly; the term “shred-days” still has a somewhat negative connotation. I would think corporate attorneys would instruct all custodians within their companies that the term “shred” should be used sparingly or not at all in communications because of the questionable implications.

The term “Shred days” reminds many of the Arthur Andersen partner who so famously sent an email message to employees working on the Enron account, reminding them to “comply with the firm’s documentation and retention policy”. The Andersen partner never ordered the destruction or shredding of evidence but because anticipation of future litigation was potentially obvious, the implication in her email was “get rid of suspect stuff”. The timing of the email message was also suspect in that just 21 minutes separated Ms. Temple’s e-mail message to Andersen employees on the Enron account about the importance of complying with the firm’s document retention policy from an entry in a record of her current projects in which she wrote that she was working on a case involving potential violations of federal securities laws.

The Rambus case highlights the need for a true information governance process including a truly defensible disposal strategy. An information governance process would have been capturing, indexing, applying retention policies, protecting content on litigation hold and disposing of content beyond the retention schedule and not on legal hold… automatically, based on documented and approved legally defensible policies. A documented and approved process which is religiously followed, and with proper safeguards goes a long way with the courts to show good faith intent to manage content and protect that content subject to anticipated litigation.

Can you wipe your twitter ramblings, and should you?

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, Information Management, Technology , , , , , , ,

In December of 2011, the Library of Congress and Twitter signed an agreement that will eventually make available every public Tweet ever sent as an archive to the Library of Congress.


While writing a blog post last week, I began  to wonder how long all my twitter postings would
be available and who could look at them. For the fun of it, I went back through approximately 6 months of my old twitter postings, re-tweets and replies (yes you can do it, it’s relatively easy and you can look at anyone’s).

I’ve been pretty good about keeping my twitter posts “business-like” and have steered away from personal stuff like “I just checked in to the Ramada Inn on route 11…can’t wait for the evening to begin!”, or “does anyone know how to setup an off-shore bank account?” or “those jerks over at Company ABC are a bunch of losers”.  But many tweeters aren’t so disciplined and have posted stuff that could come back to haunt them later. I could imagine a perspective employer reviewing a candidate’s twitter history or even worse an attorney conducting research for a case using the public twitter archives to create a timeline.

With that in mind, could you delete your twitter postings and should you? Twitter does allow you to delete specific tweets one at a time but as far as I can determine, Twitter does not give you the ability to delete your entire twitter history short of deactivating your account. From the Twitter website:

How To Delete a Tweet

If you’ve posted something that you’d rather take back, you can remove it easily. When you hover over your Tweet while viewing your home or profile page, you’ll see a few options appear below the message.

To delete one of your Twitter updates:

  1. 1.       Log in to Twitter.com
  2. 2.       Visit your Profile page
  3. 3.       Locate the Tweet you want to delete
  4. 4.       Hover your mouse over the message (as shown below), and click the “Delete” option that appears

Voila! Gone forever… almost. Deleted updates sometimes hang out in Twitter search. They will clear with time.

We do not provide a way to bulk delete Tweets. If you’re looking to get a “fresh start” on your Twitter account without losing your username, the best way to do this is to create a temporary account with a temporary username, and then switch the username between your current account and the temporary account. Please see our article on How to Change Your Username for more info. 

On December 30, 2011, CNET published a story titled “How to delete all your tweets” which highlighted a product called TwitWipe. TwitWipe is a free tool that allows you to delete ALL your past tweets in one fell swoop. This may be handy because you can clean out your twitter account and start fresh without changing your username and dumping all your hard won followers.

This is an interesting capability but I think the more important question is why would you use this drastic of a step? The four most obvious reasons one would want to delete all their twitter postings and start fresh would be:

1.       You went through an unfortunate period in your life that you would rather forget

2.       You were regularly conducting criminal activities through your Twitter account

3.       You are considering a run for the presidency

4.       For whatever reason, you don’t want your twitter postings archived and available at the Library of Congress

The ability to delete ESI can be dangerous if done at the wrong time, especially if civil litigation is anticipated. Deleting a single tweet or every tweet you have ever posted can be construed as destruction of evidence if those tweets could have been relevant in litigation. ESI, no matter its format or where it’s stored, is potentially evidence  and should be at least considered when protecting ESI for litigation hold. Attorneys on both sides need to include social media content like twitter postings in their eDiscovery plans and be sure to warn all custodians about deleting/editing  social media content once litigation is anticipated.

Facebook Spoliation Costs Widower and His Attorney $700K in Sanctions

Bill Tolson eDiscovery , , , ,

The below article is from Abovethelaw.com by Christopher Danzig

In 2008, truck driver William Donald Sprouse pleaded guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter for the accidental death of 25-year-old Jessica Lester. According to a bluntly-written news article from the time of the trial, Sprouse’s “truck rounded a corner on two wheels, flipped and rolled over onto Lester’s car, a crushing sixty thousand pounds landing where Jessica sat.”

Jessica’s parents and her widower, Isaiah Lester, won a massive wrongful death suit in 2010 against Sprouse and his employer at the time of the accident, Allied Concrete Company. A Virginia jury awarded them a massive $10.6 million. Clearly, the family’s wounds were still fresh.

But the courtroom odyssey was not over.

On October 21 (nearly a year later), Judge Edward Hogshire signed a “final order” (PDF) cutting the jury verdict in half in Lester v. Allied Concrete Company and William Donald Sprouse, and penalizing Lester and his attorney, Matt Murray, a combined $722,000 in sanctions:

Whereas, the court, having reviewed the evidence and arguments of counsel and carefully considered the extensive pattern of deceptive and obstructionist conduct of Murray and Lester resulting in the sanction award, finds that most of the substantial fees and costs expended by Defendants were necessary and appropriate to address and defend against such conduct…

To read the entire article, click here.

Spoliation of the Facebook Timeline

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, Technology , , , , ,

In a previous posting, I described the new feature in Facebook called “frictionless sharing”, a Facebook feature that will make sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on a growing community of Facebook-connected apps. Potentially everything you do on the web could be shared on a timeline with your “friends” and any others (like attorneys) that get access to your page based, for example, on a Judge’s order for discoverable information.

The USA Today Tech section published an article titled “Facebook Timeline a new privacy test” a couple of days ago that got me thinking. From the USA Today article:

Up until now, Facebook accounts have focused on the most recent posts. With the new profile format, the most recent Facebook activities will be at the top. But as users go back in time, Timeline will summarize past posts — emphasizing the photos and status updates with the most “likes” or comments.

“A lot of people just don’t realize how much information they’ve shared in the past.”

This new timeline feature that takes much of what you have done on the internet and neatly organizes it into a timeline is a perfect target for eDiscovery. This brings up two questions; can you edit or hide items on your timeline and can you permanently delete data from your Facebook timeline? These two questions also highlight another question…if you edit your Facebook account and or remove something from your timeline, could that be considered spoliation in a legal proceeding?

Before I address the spoliation issue, let me address the first two questions.

1. Can you edit or hide items on your timeline? The answer is yes you can. From the Facebook help center:

How do I remove a story from my timeline?

You get to decide which stories appear on your timeline. Hover over a story on your timeline to see your options:

  • (Feature on Timeline): This allows you to highlight the stories you think are important. When you star a story, the story expands to widescreen. Starred stories are also always visible on your timeline.
  • (Edit): This gives you the option to:

  • Hide from Timeline: This removes stories from your timeline. Note that these stories will still show up in your activity log, which only you can see. They also may appear in your friend’s News Feeds.
  • Depending on the type of story (ex: status update, check-in, tagged photo), you may also have the option to:
  • Change the date of a story (ex: for an old photo, you can enter the date the photo was taken so it shows up in the right place on your timeline)
  • Delete a post (that you posted)
  • Report a post or mark it as spam (that someone else posted)

You’ll notice there isn’t a “delete” capability in the edit function.

2. Can you permanently delete timeline data from your Facebook account? As far as I can tell you can. In Facebook there is a feature called the “activity log” that is a record of all of your activity on Facebook. From the Facebook help center:

What is the activity log?

The activity log is a record of all of your activity on Facebook. So if you hide a story from your timeline, this story will still appear in your activity log. Your activity log is only visible to you. However, all of the stories in your activity log are eligible to appear on your timeline (unless you hide them from your timeline) or in your friend’s News Feeds.

The stories in your activity log are organized by the date they happened on Facebook. You can access your activity log by clicking the View Activity button on your timeline.

From the activity log you can:

  • Scroll through a history of all of your activity on Facebook
  • View and approve your pending posts
  • Filter the type of activity you see (ex: see all of your status updates or all of the links you’ve shared)
  • Choose which stories are featured on your timeline

You can also click the button to the right of each story. Depending on the story type (ex: status update, photo, app story), you may have the option to:

  • See the audience you shared
  • Delete posts
  • Report a post or mark it as spam
  • Change the date of a story
  • Remove an app from your account

So you can potentially delete items from your timeline… So this brings up my question on spoliation of the Facebook timeline; what, if anything, do organizations have to do to safeguard against altering the organization’s or employees personal Facebook timelines if pending litigation is foreseeable?

Obviously the Facebook timeline is potentially discoverable depending on the circumstances of the case. Organizations need to include the Facebook timeline in their litigation hold/eDiscovery process and to inform impacted employees of their responsibilities to protect potentially responsive information from within all of their personal accounts that could hold relevant ESI including the Facebook timeline data.

As a side note, it’s always a good practice to regularly remind employees not to mix business ESI with their personal accounts.

Will Spoliation Insurance Change How Judges Rule?

Bill Tolson eDiscovery , , , , , , ,

On Dec.2 2010, the Lexington Insurance Company started selling a new product–spoliation insurance. No, spoliation is not misspelled, and no, it’s not a witty descriptor for what’s likely to happen inside the office break room refrigerator before the end of the holidays. Spoliation is a legal term for the destruction of evidence in civil litigation matters. And this form of insurance protects you in the event a judge imposes fines or penalties because of lost evidence or other eDiscovery failures.

Why might you need spoliation insurance? Well, Duke University conducted a recent study finding 97 eDiscovery sanction cases in 2009, more than any prior year. These are cases where the judge has determined one of the parties destroyed evidence and now must determine a penalty for this destruction of evidence.

Some questions that come to mind for me:

  1. Does having spoliation insurance mean the discoveree can exercise less care with his records information management (RIM) program, litigation hold, or discovery processes because they don’t have to worry about a fine or penalty?
  2. Is the fact that you have spoliation insurance discoverable?
  3. Would the fact that you have spoliation insurance alter the ruling by the judge? (Would the judge, for instance, impose a higher fine or penalty to hammer the insurance company?)

Obviously, spoliation insurance will not affect whether your organization wins or loses the case. Also, I would expect insurance companies to set premiums to reflect their risk. If the insured has an effective RIM program and processes to find and protect responsive electronically stored information easily, insurers should lower premiums for these buyers over other applicants with questionable or no processes or other tools.

The next question that comes to mind is: Do you need spoliation insurance if your organization has prepared for effective eDiscovery by creating RIM policies, training employees on responsibilities and processes, and acquiring technology like an archive to better control ESI?

Now, the answer to this question is pretty commonsensical. Invest in responsible processes and training as well as the best tools/automation for RIM and eDiscovery, and you likely won’t need spoliation insurance.

The ABA Journal had a story on spoliation insurance on March 1, 2011. The ABA Journal article can be viewed here.

The case of the disappearing text messages

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, Technology , , , , , ,

I ran across an interesting mobile phone application the other day called Tiger Text (also called the cheating spouse app). Tiger Text is an app that bills itself as a tool to help people “cover their tracks”, in this case tracks that are left when sending traditional text messages from phone to phone.  What Tiger Text does is enable a user to send text messages back and forth to others also using Tiger Text and not worry about the text message being found by someone else, because messages sent via Tiger Text will essentially self destruct within a specified timeframe.

When you send a text message using Tiger Text, the content of your message is never sent to the recipient’s phone as it does when you send a standard text message.  Since the message doesn’t reside on the recipient’s phone, but rather stored on Tiger Text’s servers, you are given full control when the messages are deleted from Tiger Text’s servers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see from the screen shots above, once the messages are gone, they are gone.  You can set messages to ‘Delete on Read’ or set your own time limit such as 2 hours, 4 hours, etc. Keep in mind that both sender and recipient must have the Tiger Text application installed for the capability to work (there is a free reader if the other person doesn’t want to buy Tiger Text), and if a message is set to expire at a specified time period and it’s not read, then it’s gone forever. This “Delete” capability can be set from the menu shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The actual content of TigerText messages are erased from the sender’s phone, the recipient’s phone and all servers when the message expires. TigerText does not allow the user to copy or save a message, however if someone really wanted to they could video capture your TigerText, take a screen shot, or take a photo of their phone. TigerText cannot promise that your messages will not be copied by some alternative means. Be smart! Anyone can take a picture of a phone.

Tiger Text is available for iPhones, Blackberrys, Microsoft powered mobile phones and Android phones.

What’s this got to do with eDiscovery?

With above description in mind, it occurred to me that this application could cause some problems for the eDiscovery process.

  1. If a custodian is using this application while they are potentially a party to litigation and are using this app to send or receive information relevant to the case, are they guilty of destruction of evidence? In my opinion, absolutely!
  2. How could you place and enforce a litigation hold on this data? The answer is you can’t.
  3.  How would an organization collecting responsive data for eDiscovery even know to look for this capability? It all comes down to knowing the technology landscape and asking the right questions of custodians such as “do you utilize any applications or other processes on any computing devices including cell phones which automatically delete ESI?”
  4. So what’s an organization to do? The only thing you can do is forbid installing these kinds of applications on any organization assets and audit to see that custodians are following the policy. You obviously can’t do anything about what employees do with their own non-company owned devices except to reiterate that company related business should never be conducted over non-company owned devices (and its always a good idea to remind employees that if they do use their own devices for company business this will open their personal computers, phones etc to eDiscovery).

The main point is to be aware of these capabilities and to look for them when in eDiscovery.

Accidental Data Deletion Still Considered Spoliation

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, records retention, Technology , , , , , , ,

From an article posted to the Infosecurity-us.com website yesterday:

When litigation-based data management isn’t taken seriously dire consequences will occur.

When it comes to electronic discovery, if you fail to protect potentially relevant data and it’s destroyed, no matter the excuse, you have deprived the other side of their right to all relevant evidence to support their case and subsequently put them at a disadvantage.

What are your responsibilities when it comes to securing data that could be used against you in a current or future civil lawsuit? Judges today have little sympathy for accidental or shoddy data handling practices when it comes to protecting and turning over data in litigation.

Controlling your company’s information at all times is crucial if, or when, you get dragged into civil litigation. What is eDiscovery? Well, it’s not an afterhours team-building exercise. Electronic discovery (also called eDiscovery or Discovery) refers to any process (in any country) in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. The eDiscovery process can be carried out offline on a particular computer or it can be accomplished on a corporate network.

Since the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were adopted in December 2006, judges expect that organizations in eDiscovery have complete control of their organization’s data and can fully respond to an eDiscovery request in days or weeks, not months or years.

The entire article can be read here

The coming collision of “free to the public cloud storage” and eDiscovery

Bill Tolson Cloud Storage, eDiscovery, Information Management, Technology , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The discovery process is tough, time consuming and expensive. What new problems are corporate attorneys facing now with the availability of “free to the public cloud storage”?

First, what is “free to the public cloud storage”? For the purposes of this blog I will define it as a minimum amount of storage capacity offered by a third party, stored and accessible via the internet made available to the public at no cost (with the hope you purchase more). The cloud storage offerings I’ve already mentioned do not limit the types of files you can upload to these services. Music storage is a prime target for these services but many, like myself, are using them for storage of other types of files such as work files which can be accessed and used with nothing more than a computer and internet connection, anywhere.

Examples of these cloud storage offerings include Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud, and Microsoft SkyDrive. I looked at the Google Cloud Service but determined it is only useful with Google Docs.

A more detailed comparison of these services can be found here.

The only differences between the four offerings stem from the amount of free capacity available and how you access your files. For example, my Amazon Cloud Drive as seen from my Firefox web interface:

Figure 1: The Amazon Cloud Drive web interface

The advantage to users for these services is the ability to move and store work files that are immediately available to you from anywhere. This means you no longer have to copy files to a USB stick or worse, email work files as an attachment to your personal email account. The disadvantage of these services are corporate information can easily migrate away from the company security and be managed by a third party the company has no agreement with or understanding of in reference to the third party will respond to eDiscovery requests. Also be aware that ESI, even deleted ESI is not easily removed completely. In a previous blog I talked about the Dropbox “feature” of not completely removing ESI when deleted from the application as well as keeping a running audit log of all interactions of the account (all discoverable information). The Amazon Cloud Drive has the same “feature” with deletions.

Figure 2: The deleted items folder in the Amazon Cloud Drive actually keeps the deleted files for some period of time unless they are marked and “Permanently Deleted”

The big question in my mind is how will corporate counsel, employees and opposing counsel address this new potential target for responsive ESI? Take, for example, a company which doesn’t include public cloud storage as a potential litigation hold target, doesn’t ask employees about their use and or doesn’t search through these accounts for responsive ESI…potential spoliation.

For Corporate counsel:

  1. Be aware these types of possible ESI storage locations exist.
  2. Create a use policy addressing these services. Either forbid employees from setting up and using these services from any work location and equipment or if allowed be sure employees acknowledge these accounts can and will be subject to eDiscovery search.
  3. Audit the policy to insure it is being followed.
  4. Enforce the policy if employees are not following it.
  5. Document everything.

For employees:

  1. Understand that if you setup and use these services from employer locations, equipment and with company ESI, all ESI in that account could be subject to eDiscovery review.
  2. If you use these services for work, only use them with company ESI, not personal files.
  3. Be forthcoming with any legal questioning about the existence of these services you use.
  4. Do not download any company ESI from these services to any personal computer, this could potentially open up that personal computer to eDiscovery by corporate counsel

For opposing counsel:

Ask the following questions to the party being discovered

  1. Do any of your employees utilize company sanctioned or non-sanctioned public cloud storage services?
  2. Do you have a use policy which addresses these services?
  3. Does the policy penalize employees for not following this use policy?
  4. Do you audit this use policy?
  5. Have you documented the above?

These services are the obvious path for employees to utilize over the next couple of years to make their lives easier. All involved need to be aware of the eDiscovery implications.

Part 2: Finding hidden data and metadata in office documents for eDiscovery

Bill Tolson eDiscovery, Technology , , , , , , , , ,

I ended my last blog with the question; So what and how should a company put in place a process to make sure this type of metadata is removed as a standard process before litigation arises?

Before we answer that question, let’s review the point of the last posting. The point was that Microsoft Office (and other applications) can be a rich source of discoverable information (not just metadata, thanks Leonid) for the plaintiff, especially if the author of the document didn’t take the time to scrub all hidden and personal information before finalizing it. Obviously this unseen data can be a goldmine for the opposing counsel if they know to look for it.

To address this risk, you should get your employees into the habit of “finalizing” documents by running the Microsoft Office “Document Inspector” as well as deleting all previous revisions of the document. To many, this seems like a lot of trouble but in the long run can significantly reduce your eDiscovery risk.

Figure 1: Accessing the “Document Inspector” in Word 2007

The Document Inspector provides a central location for you to examine documents for personal, hidden, or sensitive information. You can then use built-in Document Inspector modules to remove unwanted information more easily. The document inspector can be found by clicking on the “Prepare” topic and then on the “Inspect Document” menu item. The Document Inspector is available the same way in all Microsoft Office applications.

Figure 2: The Document Inspector

As you can see above, the Document Inspector allows you to check for Comments, revisions, versions, annotations, document properties, personal information, custom XML data, headers, footers, watermarks and hidden text. This type of data can be damaging in litigation if the discovered party is not aware of its existence.

Once the Document Inspector is run, you will get an indication of potential threats as seen in the window below:

Figure 3: The Document Inspector will alert you to possible threats

From this point, you can either “remove all” hidden data for each topic searched on or none of it.

But that’s the point right? You can’t remove this data after a litigation hold has been applied so by removing this hidden data as part of a consistent process will remove the risk of having to review and turn over this data in discovery.

The two points to remember is first, this hidden data and metadata could exist in you employee’s potential responsive files which means you better review it before you turn it over and second, there are ways for employees to easily remove it themselves as part of a documented process.