What is Metadata?

🎯Recently, WhatsApp had announced its controversial terms and privacy policy. It required users to accept the terms in order to continue using the platform’s services. 

🎯The concerns were that WhatsApp may share one’s metadata (Metadata is data that describes other data). 

🎯For example, author, date created, date modified and file size are examples of very basic document metadata. Having the ability to filter through that metadata makes it much easier for someone to locate a specific document. Metadata enriches the data with information that makes it easier to find, use and manage.

There is a wide variety of metadata depending on its purpose, format, quality and volume. Some of the widely used categories of metadata are: descriptive, structural, administrative and statistical.