After finding an amusing picture on a popular imageboard, I decided to save it. A few days past and I was browsing my images folder when I realised that the thumbnail generated by Windows XP in the thumbnails view did not match the actual image.

Here is a comparison image:

What's even stranger in this situation is that the parts of the photograph that are different have actually been replaced with what might be the correct background. Furthermore, it is a jpeg (no PNG transparency tricks) that is 343 kilobytes but only 847x847 pixels wide.

What could be going on here? Could there be anything malicious in the works, or hidden data?

Before anyone asks, I have checked and preformed the following:

• Deleted Thumbs.db to reload thumbnails.
• Opened image in different editors. (they appear with the text)
• Moved image to a different directory.
• Changed the extension to .rar.

All these steps produce the same results.

Pre actual posting update:

It seems that opening the image in paint, changing the image entirely (deleting entire contents and making a red fill) will still generate the original thumbnail, even after deleting Thumbs.db etc.

I'm also hesitant to post the original data, in case there is something malicious or hidden that could be potentially illegal. (Although it would be very beneficial to see if it works on other computers and not just my own).