Is that viral video old? How to find when it was filmed

During floods, riots, wars and elections, old videos come back to life. A real clip from 2019 gets a new caption ("happening right now in...") and spreads faster than the truth. The footage is real, so it looks convincing. The date is the lie. Here's how to find when a video was really filmed.

1. Find the earliest copy

Take screenshots of three or four distinctive frames (faces, signs, landmarks) and search them with Google Lens, then Bing, Yandex and TinEye. Each search engine finds different copies. If the same footage appears in a news report from years ago, you have your answer. Our guide to free fact-check tools walks through this step by step.

2. Search with a date limit

Describe what's in the video in a Google search and add before: with a date, like flood bus washed away before:2025-01-01. Results from before the claimed date are a strong sign the clip is older. On YouTube, the upload date is shown in the video's description; compare it across the copies you find.

3. Read the clues inside the video

• Weather and season: monsoon flooding in a video claimed to be from December? Bare trees in a summer story?
• Vehicles and number plates: older car models, or a plate format from a different state or country.
• Shop signs and posters: businesses that have since closed, old election posters, prices.
• Phones and clothes: dated phone models, or masks everywhere in a "2026" crowd.
• Construction: a flyover, metro line or building that exists today but is missing in the video, or the other way round.

4. Check the file's metadata (if you have the original)

Videos straight from a camera or phone often carry a creation date in their metadata, which free tools like MediaInfo or ExifTool can show. Social apps and WhatsApp usually strip it, so it's rarely there on a forward. A scan also reads the metadata and flags dates that make no sense, such as a placeholder or a date in the future.

5. See if fact-checkers got there first

Old videos recycled during a crisis are a fact-checker's daily work. Search the claim in Google Fact Check Explorer and on BOOM, Alt News, Factly, Vishvas News and Newschecker.

6. Ask why it's appearing now

An old clip often resurfaces because something similar is happening. That makes it feel true even when it isn't. If the newest copy you can find is days old but the earliest is years old, the caption is wrong, however real the footage is.

What a scan can and can't tell you

Our checks look at whether a video was made or altered by AI. An old, real video will usually come back "most likely real", because it is. The date question needs the steps above. For the other ways real footage gets twisted, see how to spot an edited or out-of-context video.

Before you forward a "breaking" video, spend two minutes on step 1. It catches most recycled clips.