Question Do audiofiles contain digital footprint which enables to trace back to the PC where the audiofile got downloaded and edited?

[eziowar]

I'm using windows10 os on my pc. so i downloaded few audio files from a website which needs my email to login. My first question is - how to see if those audiofiles contains my email which i used to login that site? now after downloading those audiofiles to my pc, i edited them with audacity and during saving those edited files i completely kept blank in meta data section. my 2nd question is- will those edited audiofiles have any digital footprint which can b used to traceback to my pc? if so how can i see if there's any digital footprint at all in those files and how to remove those footprints? Thank you.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Here's a simple test you can do: Download the file and run an MD5 checksum on it (instructions at https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/kbs/details?targetId=kA07V000000LWYqSAO ). Then download the same file from the same place on another computer, do the same thing. If they're different, you know something happened to them.

 

[eziowar]

Here's a simple test you can do: Download the file and run an MD5 checksum on it (instructions at https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/kbs/details?targetId=kA07V000000LWYqSAO ). Then download the same file from the same place on another computer, do the same thing. If they're different, you know something happened to them.

but my files are edited on my pc using audacity, i wanna test those edited files which are offline and in my hard disk

 

[hotaru.hino]

but my files are edited on my pc using audacity, i wanna test those edited files which are offline and in my hard disk

If you're worried that the OS tags data in a way that's traceable to your computer, no, it doesn't do it.

You can verify this using the same method I described in my previous post, assuming the editing software is deterministic when performing the same operation on two different computers. But it's easier to test with a plain text file since you can easily verify the contents with a hex editor.

EDIT: On a side note, since Audacity is FOSS, you can be fairly confident it won't tag the data because otherwise someone would've made a stink about it and it's verifiable because, well, it's open source

 

[Lafong]

There is software that will supposedly wipe all metadata, but I'm not sure it meets your requirements.

 

[eziowar]

If you're worried that the OS tags data in a way that's traceable to your computer, no, it doesn't do it.

You can verify this using the same method I described in my previous post, assuming the editing software is deterministic when performing the same operation on two different computers. But it's easier to test with a plain text file since you can easily verify the contents with a hex editor.

EDIT: On a side note, since Audacity is FOSS, you can be fairly confident it won't tag the data because otherwise someone would've made a stink about it and it's verifiable because, well, it's open source

ty for replying. but how can i redownload those files on diff pc if the files are edited on my pc and are in my pc. also redownloading the files is not possible in my case 🙁

 

[eziowar]

There is software that will supposedly wipe all metadata, but I'm not sure it meets your requirements.

which software , plz tell me.

 

[USAFRet]

There is no real info that links back to your PC.

Here is an audio file.
Back In Black, from AC/DC. Digitized from my personal vinyl, years ago.
1, 2, 3

#1 is the original
#2 is a slightly modified file
#3 is #2, copied to a location on my NAS.

It shows 'File path', 'Owner' and 'Computer' as whatever system the file is sitting on.

VIPER is my Windows PC, Agora is my NAS.
If I were to download one of your files, I would see nothing of you.

You can test this yourself.
Right click on the file, select Properties, Details.
Then, move that file to a different system.
Repeat...
Those values change, regarding whatever system it lives on.

 

[hotaru.hino]

ty for replying. but how can i redownload those files on diff pc if the files are edited on my pc and are in my pc. also redownloading the files is not possible in my case 🙁

Download some file from the internet that you can edit in Audacity, or heck, maybe just a random image file and throw it on your image editor of choice. Do the same exact change on the files, save, then run them through an MD5 hash. They should be the same. The caveat here is you have to make sure that the operations and the encoding method is predictable. So you can't use a lossy codec like MP3 (for audio) or JPEG (for images) because they throw information away, even though they should, in theory, throw away the exact same information.

I could play around with this when I get home.

But again, the OS doesn't embed some sort of fingerprint of your computer in these files.

 

[eziowar]

There is no real info that links back to your PC.

Here is an audio file.
Back In Black, from AC/DC. Digitized from my personal vinyl, years ago.
1, 2, 3

#1 is the original
#2 is a slightly modified file
#3 is #2, copied to a location on my NAS.

It shows 'File path', 'Owner' and 'Computer' as whatever system the file is sitting on.

VIPER is my Windows PC, Agora is my NAS.
If I were to download one of your files, I would see nothing of you.

You can test this yourself.
Right click on the file, select Properties, Details.
Then, move that file to a different system.
Repeat...
Those values change, regarding whatever system it lives on.

thank you

 

[eziowar]

Download some file from the internet that you can edit in Audacity, or heck, maybe just a random image file and throw it on your image editor of choice. Do the same exact change on the files, save, then run them through an MD5 hash. They should be the same. The caveat here is you have to make sure that the operations and the encoding method is predictable. So you can't use a lossy codec like MP3 (for audio) or JPEG (for images) because they throw information away, even though they should, in theory, throw away the exact same information.

I could play around with this when I get home.

But again, the OS doesn't embed some sort of fingerprint of your computer in these files.

thank you

 

[Alabalcho]

On theory, usefull information can be embedded into some file types (most media files fail there) without being present in the metadata (have a look at steganography). Whether editing said files with Audacity / Photoshop / etc will change this hidden data, is a question for someone actually using this technology.