The Daily Mail newspaper secretly tailed and photographed a woman in Detroit and then published an article and photographs falsely accusing her of being former The White Stripes drummer Meg White, even after she told the newspaper it had mistaken her identity, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

The rightwing British tabloid quietly removed the article and photographs, first published on 6 August, from its website last week. The Mail did not issue a correction or editor’s note explaining the removal.

Hailed for her inspired use of raw power and space, White was named one of the 100 greatest drummers of all time by Rolling Stone in 2016. Since The White Stripes disbanded in 2011, she has lived as a reclusive private citizen in the band’s Michigan home city, eschewing all media appearances and public events.

When the highly acclaimed garage rock duo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, she declined to attend and instead sent a message of gratitude via former bandmate Jack White.

The Mail’s story, written by senior reporter Joe Hutchison, boasted that the paper had found the “reclusive female music megastar” and promised to reveal her “secret new life”, including what it claimed were the first public images of White in 17 years.

Instead, the Guardian has been told that the paper followed and photographed a completely different person who is a friend of White’s. The Mail published more than a dozen pictures taken of the unsuspecting woman getting out of a vehicle and socializing with two others outside a restaurant.

“Neither Meg nor the friend that was pictured had any idea they were being stalked and, if they had, they for sure would not have voluntarily chosen to be featured in anything having to do with the Daily Mail,” said a music label executive who was involved in multiple White Stripes releases, and who is close friends with both White and the friend that was photographed.

Speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, they confirmed that the woman the Mail photographed and White were not interested in speaking to the press. “I can also assure you that Meg is well and is living the private life she chooses and deserves in Detroit,” they added.

According to its own reporting, when the Mail finally approached and accused the woman of being White, she laughed and told the paper it was mistaken.

Hutchison wrote that, despite this, the paper concluded she was White because she politely replied “thank you” after the Mail complimented The White Stripes’ music.

“That tells the reader and the journalist exactly nothing,” said Dan Axelrod, the chair of the ethics committee at the Society of Professional Journalists, whose code of ethics is one of the most widely cited in the industry. “The person being photographed could’ve been toying with the reporter or may not have heard the question properly and was saying ‘thanks’ to be politely dismissive.”

The paper offered no justification for its attempt to pursue and surreptitiously photograph someone who has lived out of the spotlight for 15 years.

“What’s so disheartening is the great lengths they took to try and hunt her down and how reckless and cruel it was to post images of another woman all over the internet,” wrote singer-songwriter Karen Elson, the ex-spouse of Jack White, in a since-deleted social media post seen by the Guardian.

Elson also stated the woman is a friend of Meg White, adding she is someone “who we also love tremendously”.

A third person, a member of a Detroit-area band that knows White and the woman in the pictures, also confirmed the Mail’s error to the Guardian.

The Mail, which was banned as a source by moderators on Wikipedia because of its reputation for “flat-out fabrication”, is well known for its voyeuristic celebrity coverage. “We take great pride in the quality of our journalism,” the paper states on its website. The paper’s editorial code states “a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence.”

“Tabloids like this tend to view celebrity status as permission to do whatever in terms of violating privacy under the guise of ‘they are public figures so they have to expect this and/or even are asking for it,’” said Erin Meyers, a professor of communication at metro Detroit’s Oakland University who studies media coverage of celebrity.

“The fact that a private citizen got caught up in all of this should merit at the very least a correction, if not a full apology,” she added. “But I don’t think that fits in with their bulldog sort of approach to reporting, so instead they just bury it.”

The Daily Mail and Hutchison did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Axelrod said that, while “celebrity and gossip reporting gets stereotyped as inherently unethical, frivolous, and even inhumane,” tabloid reporting “can be ethical and substantive – just look at how just look at how the National Enquirer exposed John Edwards’ extramarital affair”.

But the Mail, he observed, “followed none of the most basic principles of journalism”, and the woman it followed “didn’t deserve to be chased around by the Daily Mail, ogled, photographed, and chronicled like a circus bear”.

“The SPJ Code of Ethics reminds journalists to ‘realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures’ and to ‘weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information’,” he added. “With the power to reach and convince millions of people of facts, the Daily Mail can still be a unique tabloid that entertains and informs without sacrificing accuracy or being inhumane to those it covers.”

Representatives for White did not reply to requests for comment.