EXIF data.  What is it and how do I see it?

When you get a photo off a scammer, sometimes you can find out more about it than you may think.  Pictures have what's called EXIF data embedded in them, which tells you things like when it was created, what camera/scanner they used, if it's been Photoshopped and so on.  So how do you find this out?  There's a piece of freeware called Irfanview that'll let you do it.  You can find it at

http://www.irfanview.com 

Not straight out of the box though.  Download and install Irfanview, then download and install the plugins.  You have to install the plugins for the EXIF plugin to be installed.  Both downloads can be found on the site above. 

So now you have it installed, how do you use it?  Open Irfanview from your start menu, press the O key to open a file and select the one you want.  Once you can see the picture in Irfanview, press the I key, and if you can see a box marked "Exif info" then press the E key to see the EXIF info.  If you don't see "Exif info" then there's none there and there's nothing you can do about it.  Not every picture has it, but those that do can be checked this way.

Here's a simpler way to check EXIF data if you're using Firefox (And you should be. It's much better than IE!!!)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905 is an addon that'll let you see EXIF data from a photo with just a right click.