this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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So I come across a photo I saved from a 'conversation' with someone using iMessage (saved to photos). Problem is, I don't recall with whom I was messaging and now that I've figured out a solution to to the problem (reason they sent the photo), I don't recall who sent me the photo. Am I screwed , or is there metadata of some sort associate with the image that will give me the phone number or email of the message from which I saved it? And because I have hundreds of messages I'm never going to find it manually. Honestly? This is driving me nuts. And I'm more than a little sad because I have the 'fix' needed (reason they send me the photo). Is there any data saved that would let me get there from here? Thanks in advance!

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[โ€“] binaryriot@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If it's on a Mac there should be metadata, check with:

mdls /path/to/your/file

Usually there's some kMDItemWhereFroms or similar.

[โ€“] jbeech-@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Daughter has a Mac laptop, but not as techy as we are (me and wife), but I'll ask her look into this, thanks. Meanwhile, have come across a few other photos where it would be nice to be able to get back to the senders, so I am quite hopeful for this working.