iphone photo data query

[arfursleep]

A business contact sent me a photo from their iPhone a couple of weeks ago purportedly taken on a specific date and at a specific location as part of an explanation for their non-attendance at a meeting.

I saved the photo to my camera roll as it was of interest to me.

I was looking through my photo album last night and was surprised to find the photo was not in the January album as expected (given photo was supposedly taken in January and/or I saved it to my roll in January) but in the October album. I double clicked the photo data and discovered, according to displayed info, that the photo was taken with an iPhone in October in a different location from the one i was told.

I assume that the individual has no reason to send me a manipulated photo and certainly not one with that data when they were trying to demonstrate they were somewhere else at a different time.

How likely is it that the phone data was incorrect or have been intentionally misled?

[Saleen836]

Recently (the past week or 2) I have been sent photos/videos via whatsapp which is set to auto save such items to camera roll, when I have gone to forward them on say an hour later I have had to scroll back a month or 2 or even 3 to find the photo/video as for some reason it wasn't at the end of the camera roll as I expected. Could be a glitch with Apple?

[Wrathalanche]

arfursleep said:

How likely is it that the phone data was incorrect or have been intentionally misled?

This I can't say, but certainly when I have been away somewhere with my wife or friends, and I ask for photos from the trip be sent to me afterwards, those photos once saved appear in chronological order along with my own photos taken at that time and place.

I was out in Australia a few years ago with work, and sent the Mrs some photos which she saved. When she looks at the "map view" of photo locations on her phone's IOS, she has some thumbnails appearing above Oz as if she was there and took them.

So from my experience, the meta data is pretty accurate. I think its more likely that a photo would somehow gain a date stamp that's LATER than when it was actually taken. Like, for example, if a photo was copied, or had gone through some innocent photo editing app which spat out a fresher copy. But an earlier date is a bit suspicious. If it was a glitch, its pretty impressive that both the time and locations changed, and - correct me if I'm wrong - that the random glitch location was somehow in the slightest bit relevant (ie, even just being on land and not in the middle of an ocean would be quite impressive if truly random, never mind the same town/county/Country).

If, say, the iphone that the photo was taken with had a drastically incorrect date and time setting, which was disabled from being updated by internet and location settings, you maybe could potentially take a photo that would have a time stamp prior to the actual day it was taken, but you would need to work really hard to make that happen, begging the question: why?

Sounds like someone is telling porky pies but I don't know if I'd be confident enough to challenge them based solely on that unless I really understood how it worked.

Edited by Wrathalanche on Thursday 24th January 13:51