Random people showing up in Track Changes??

Anonymous
2023-02-05T00:30:48+00:00

I am doing revisions on a novel and random people are now showing up in the track changes. I have not shared this document with anyone, but it is stored in my OneDrive. How did these people's names get in my document? They are coming up as reviewers and their names are attached to changes I've made.

This is incredibly concerning and a HUGE privacy violation. Has anyone else seen this??

For what it is worth, I've googled these people and I have NO connection to them at all. But one thing I did notice is that LinkedIn profiles appear for all of them near the top of the Google results. One of them is the CMO of Whole Foods?? I, personally, do not have a LinkedIn profile nor have I ever.

Microsoft Word for Mac v16.69.1

macOS 13.2

EDIT: I updated the screenshot to remove content of document.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | Other | MacOS

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  1. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2023-02-18T10:30:23+00:00

    Microsoft does read the input they receive through the Feedback facility. They won't necessarily respond, though, even if you ask them to do so.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-02-18T03:44:57+00:00

    Hi David,

    Thanks for the "me too" reply, but it's very important for ALL affected users to send in a report to Microsoft so they know how widespread the problem is.

    In Microsoft Word, use the Menu Bar. Choose Help > Feedback > I Don't Like Something to tell Microsoft you are affected by this problem.

    Thanks.

    Jim, I know this is important, but it is falling on deaf ears. Microsoft ghosted me on this. They contacted me and I responded, but nothing since. That was over a week ago.

    Microsoft has gone very far downhill in the last few years with spamming paying customers with constants ads and nagware. This extreme violation of privacy is the last straw for me.

    I'm in the process of downloading all my OneDrive files and will switch to Pages and convert to Word when I need to send my editor a Word file. This is so disappointing. I simply can't trust them anymore.

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  3. Jim G 134.1K Reputation points MVP
    2023-02-17T17:34:10+00:00

    Hi David,

    Thanks for the "me too" reply, but it's very important for ALL affected users to send in a report to Microsoft so they know how widespread the problem is.

    In Microsoft Word, use the Menu Bar. Choose Help > Feedback > I Don't Like Something to tell Microsoft you are affected by this problem.

    Thanks.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-02-17T12:07:11+00:00

    Dear all,

    I have the same issue.

    In my instance this only affects document formatting (highlighting and text size).

    Has anyone seen any change to fundamental content? Or to comments?

    Many thanks,

    Jon

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-02-17T00:56:41+00:00

    I also am experiencing the same trouble on a Mac with a document shared via sharepoint with multiple authors. But the changes I have made (to formatting) are showing up as random author names (usually names of very senior people from random organisations with LinkedIn profiles).

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