To those of you running Office 97 or 2000, you might want to check this one out.

Why is this not surprising???

Very interesting information. Question, has anyone been tracked down by using a Word document? And how damaging is this to a person's privacy?

I would say that nobody has probably been tracked down due to something like this, but there is always that possibility.
As far as privacy goes YES I personally believe that this does violate a persons privacy. Anything that software or companies have incorporated into their software that people don't know about is wrong. They should at least make it known!!!!!
But then again that is just me. I am sure others feel the same way, but.......

Ever recall Melissa virus?

The author was tracked down because of these 'MS features' in Word documents.

As for making it public:

Not all computers come equipped with a NIC card.

If you ever happen to take a look at properties of any document from Word, you'll notice all the fields such as telephone, etc. There are such a wide range of identifications in a lot of file types that never gets used, yet they still remain - so obviously someone find them useful.

It was funny, I saw this either on the cad or warp2search, since they've got some German newsie they were reporting this 'shocking' discovery of potential for personal info being published along with your office documents - yeah, maybe you can just go to file - properties to find that, and have no need to use some 'special' program to read the word document and find that embedded.