Participant

Question

Changing Document Create Date and Time in Properties/Metadata

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 27, 2022
2 replies
12018 views

Hi there

I am pursuing a legal case, where I need to demonstate that someone has forged a contract in a PDF.

The creation date is listed as 6/6/2021 12:00:00. This very precise time stamp raised a red flag with my fraud team. I am looking to create a similair document with the same time stamp, just to show it can be done, The month/date is easy, by changing the timings on my PC. Getting the time correct is trickier.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Many thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Acrobat has no feature to change these dates, but it is trivially easy. I will not cover how. You cannot rely on these dates for anything legally binding. That's what digital signatures, based on purchased certificates, are for.

Also, you might find some PDF creation apps don't set an accurate time, or set it to 12:00. The (untrustworthy) document info will show what app (claims to have) made it.

S

sailorman01Author

Participant

Thank you for suggesting digital signatures - that is very useful for my case

Can someone point me in the direction of how to change that date time information? I susepoct it is straightforward!

Thanks for the ideas - this is very helpful.

Many thanks

try67

Community Expert

Any PDF library worth its salt can do it, but you will not get more instructions on that here (at least not publicly), as we don't wish to make it easier for those who want to fake it. However, if the creation time of the file is exactly 12:00:00 that's a pretty strong indication that it was set programmatically, as the chances of it happening exactly on midday (down to the second) organically are very small.

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

At Windows you can change date and time.

S

sailorman01Author

Participant

Bernd

Thanks you for the reply.

You are correct to say you can change thate date in Windows very easily, but the time clearly keeps changing. Creating a property where the time says 12:00:00 is more difficult. That is what I am trying to do.

I need to match the time to show it is possible to forge a document.

Any thoughts anyone?

Many thanks'

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

You can set the exact time with a utility under Windows. It is also possible to change the metadata in the PDF file.

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