audit-metadata-privacy

name	audit-metadata-privacy
description	Audit supported metadata surfaces in images, SVG, PDF, and OOXML assets for privacy signals such as GPS, author, device, software, comments, and timestamps. Use when preparing a public release and metadata exposure must be assessed without altering or invalidating provenance.

Audit Metadata Privacy

Find disclosure risks without modifying the file. Report categories and severity; do not print sensitive values by default.

Supported containers: PNG, JPEG (EXIF, XMP, IPTC-IIM, COM), WebP, BMFF (MP4/HEIC/AVIF), TIFF, PDF, SVG, OOXML and ODF.

All paths below are relative to this skill's directory. If you are running from elsewhere, use an absolute path to scripts/audit_metadata.py.

Workflow

1. Run:

   python3 scripts/audit_metadata.py /absolute/path/to/asset
   

2. Review findings, which contain categories and evidence locations rather than raw values.

3. Treat HIGH findings such as GPS as requiring deliberate review before publication. GPS is also read from EXIF IFD1 (the embedded thumbnail), which commonly retains location after the primary IFD has been scrubbed.

4. If format_supported is false, say so explicitly rather than reporting a clean result.

5. Before removing anything, verify whether the field belongs to a signed C2PA manifest.

6. If a sanitized derivative is needed, preserve the original, document the transformation, and re-run provenance verification on the derivative.

Boundaries

• This skill is audit-only and never rewrites the source.
• NONE_OBSERVED is not a guarantee; the bounded parser can miss encrypted, proprietary, malformed, unsupported, or remotely stored metadata.
• Provenance metadata is not automatically a privacy risk.
• Ordinary metadata removal can invalidate a signed asset.

Read references/privacy-boundaries.md before recommending a mutation workflow.