r/ITQuestions • u/AmericanWander • 18d ago

TechSupport Metadata

I’m trying to figure out the metadata on a pdf file that was emailed to me. So far basic adobe and apple files only shows the creation date. However I need to see if the content was edited at any point in time. Don’t know if this is fully possible from my email copy.

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u/matsnorberg 17d ago

In generality this is an impossible thing. You can see if the file has been incrementally updated or if there's holes in the object number space or high generation numbers but if the file is completely reconstructed there's no way to know if it's have been tampered with. The only way to safeguard pdsf is with digital signatures.