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A picture was forwarded to my phone. The person who forwarded it to me won't say who sent it to them. Is there a way I can find the origin of the picture? Can I find out the number of the phone that took the picture?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Nancy Heater
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  • yes, however you will need help from the carrier and any other in between party involved. as to whether this is legal. ask a lawyer (FIRST). – LvB Aug 19 '16 at 13:14
  • You shall require RTI in short. It's Right To Information. – Shritam Bhowmick Aug 19 '16 at 13:20
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    You may be able to extract some EXIF or Meta data. There is probably no phone number but maybe a location where it was taken or what phone was used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format – Lexu Aug 19 '16 at 13:21
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    Note that if it was transferred by MMS, or via a social media site as an embedded picture (rather than an attached file), the EXIF data will not be present. – Polynomial Aug 19 '16 at 13:42
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    My advice is that you're approaching this the wrong way. If he refuses to give you the number, perhaps he has something to hide? This is a relationship issue, not a technical issue. Resolve your problems by talking, not via forensic investigation. – Polynomial Aug 19 '16 at 13:43
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    This question has nothing to do with information security. – mootmoot Aug 19 '16 at 14:16
  • I think you need to be more clear about the chain of events here. Was the picture sent to your boyfriends phone? How (MMS, Facebook, ...)? After that, was is forwarded to your phone? How? – Anders Aug 19 '16 at 14:43
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    I think the problem is with your relationship with your boyfriend, not the picture. – user1666620 Aug 19 '16 at 15:41
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    @mootmoot How so? Whether some information is hidden definitely belongs to information security. A technical solution absolutely the wrong way to solve the underlying problem (relationship distrust), but the technical problem (whether the origin of an image can be found) is, in itself, a perfectly reasonable question here. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Aug 19 '16 at 19:05
  • @Gilles : Read the question. It has nothing to do with security break in, etc. If the material forwarded are something against the law, then reporting to law enforcement is the only way to fix it. – mootmoot Aug 22 '16 at 08:30
  • @mootmoot ??? This question has nothing to do with legal concerns. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Aug 22 '16 at 08:52
  • @Gilles : A digital picture will not contains phone number. Only legitimate authority with court warrant are only allow to trace the route to the origin under special circumstances, e.g. to catch a felony . Otherwise it will be invasion of civil privacy. Bare in mind that, picture can be downloaded from a web page, then it will be wasting time for the legal body to trace the phone number even, not unless one are sure the picture are captured by a phone camera(well, sometime the picture does contains phone model signature). Am I clear? – mootmoot Aug 22 '16 at 09:13

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Hopefully it is enabled on the phone, check the properties of the picture for geotags. No phone number though, but the GPS location should give you an idea though. Personally I'd be suspicious of the lackbof his willingness to be forthcoming with the number.

user2620354
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