Thread: Do files have digital footprints?

Hey,

Strange questions, maybe some of you techies can help me out.

To cut a long story short:-
I put my external hard-drive in to get fixed by a trader who works from home. He broke my hard drive but he recovered the files. So I have sent him a bill for the cost of a new hard-drive, stating my legal right to get repair or replacement.

He has turned around and said that there are illegal images on the drive and that I would come out worse if I tried to do anything.

My question is this:
Is it possible to trace the origin of files? No images have been placed on the internet or anything, simply gone from PC > external > to this guys hard-drive.

I cannot think of any bad images (besides the one or two pictures I have of some boobs ) but if it comes down to knitty-gritty, can I prove where these pictures have come from? I can imagine him placing images alongside mine..

Thanks for any help.

He's bluffing. Any forensics tech would be able to both know when the files were transferred and if they were manipulated.
Are you sure he meant pictures? Images can also mean downloaded discs and games. Maybe games that you legally backed up and then lost the disks for? (wink wink)

I am a tech and take me word for it, if you don't have anything illegal then you have no worries.

Also, you say you put it in to get fixed and then he broke it....isn't that like saying "It was broken and he broke it"? Unless you can prove the tech broke it you don't have much of a case anyway.

To answer your original question though "Is it possible to trace the origin of files?", the answer is "yes, but..."
Photos and such have xif(or something like that) info and can be traced back to the camera that took them. It would be way too expensive and if you downloaded it chances are the info was removed anyway.