IN THE MURKY WORLD OF PR, HIDDEN TREASURES ARE WRITTEN IN INVISIBLE INK
Lai See is a bit reluctant to share this secret with you, as the more PR flacks know about it, the less likely our chances of getting our hands on a juicy story. But in the spirit of fair play, here we go.
Just because you delete a passage from a document doesn't mean it's gone forever. There are ways of finding all kinds of hidden information in the press releases and other documents you send to us.
PR firm Consultancy, the agency representing Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), learned this the hard way. Just after 6.30pm Monday, the agency sent out a press release inviting reporters to listen in on a conference call about SMIC's fourth-quarter earnings, which were to be announced the next day. Hidden within the invitation were the actual numbers thought to have been deleted.
A simple use of the 'track changes' features in Microsoft Word revealed the entire earnings announcement, which was not scheduled to be released for another 12 hours.
You would be surprised how often companies send out documents containing hidden data. One interesting application that tells us a lot about Microsoft Word documents is Trace by Workshare. Trace flagged 23 'high risk' elements in the SMIC press invite.