this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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If you write something in Word or an equivalent program, there will be metadata of the save files that shows creation and edit timestamps. If they use something like Google Docs, there's a very similar mechanism via the version history. I actually had the metadata from a Word document be useful in a legal case.
Ok, and that's proof of what exactly? That you made the file when you said you did?
Not to mention, you can set those to whatever value you want
I can see how it could be part of a court case, because it's one more little corroborating detail. It doesn't prove anything though
The edit history would show things like copy/pasting large blocks of text versus normally typed edits.
A quick search shows you can edit this as well... That is interesting though, I didn't know it existed
Give me a couple hours and I could build something that makes pastes appear to be keystrokes. Give me a weekend, and I can build something mathematically indistinguishable from a human typing that will hold up to intense scrutiny
It still doesn't prove anything, it's just one more piece of circumstantial evidence. Still, it's not unreasonable to paste the full text into it, or mix and match. Maybe you don't have word installed on your computer - I don't, I haven't since I was in school myself. It's reasonable to use word on school computers but do all of the work on an online text editor, then pasting into word on a school computer