Glossary
What is timestamping?
Timestamping is the practice of recording exactly when an online item was captured, along with the time source used, separate from any publication time shown on the platform itself. A defensible timestamp answers when something was preserved, not when it was originally posted or how authentic it is.
Online material decays in ways that make this distinction matter. A post's platform-visible timestamp can be edited, ambiguous across time zones, or simply absent by the time anyone captures it. Capture time, discovery time, platform-visible time, and review time are four different events, and conflating them is one of the most common weaknesses in self-collected evidence. A careful record keeps them as separate fields: when the material was found, when it was captured, what time the platform displayed, and when a reviewer examined it.
UTC is the preferred format for cross-platform matters, since it removes ambiguity when material spans time zones or when a matter later needs to be reconstructed by someone unfamiliar with the original collector's local time. The timestamp's value comes from what it is attached to: the source URL, the capture method, and the custody record. A date on its own, without those attachments, is closer to a claim than a record.
Finium records capture time, source-visible time (where shown), discovery time, and review time as distinct fields in every evidence file, linked to the same evidence ID as the underlying capture, so a reviewer can see the full sequence rather than one blended date.