Screenshots get challenged in court.
ProofSnap evidence gets checked.

ProofSnap is a Chrome and Edge extension that captures web pages as legal evidence with hashing, a digital signature and blockchain timestamping, so any later change to the package can be detected.

ProofSnap uses OpenTimestamps to anchor a SHA-256 hash of your evidence to the Bitcoin blockchain, creating a cryptographic proof that the package existed no later than the anchor time. The proof is independently verifiable and cannot be backdated. It is included on every plan except Essential.

ProofSnap includes a 7-day free trial with all plans, and the trial requires a credit card. Choose from flexible monthly or annual subscriptions: Essential ($8.99/month (about £7) or $80/year (about £60)), Professional ($16.99/month (about £13) or $160/year (about £120)), or Enterprise ($28.99/month (about £22) or $280/year (about £210)). Annual plans save up to 26%. Every plan and SnapPack is broken down in ProofSnap plans and prices explained.

Yes. In the ProofSnap Dashboard at app.getproofsnap.com you paste one or more URLs and our servers load the pages and return the same sealed evidence package. It works for public pages; for a page behind a login or paywall, use the extension. A new dashboard account starts with 50 free test captures, and the dashboard and the API have their own plans, separate from the extension.

In England and Wales a ProofSnap package is put before the court like any other document. Under the Civil Procedure Rules a document you disclose is deemed authentic unless the other side serves a notice to prove it, and the court then weighs it. The package is built to answer that notice: hashes, a signed manifest, a chain of custody and, on Enterprise and Company plans or with an eIDAS SnapPack, a qualified timestamp carrying the presumption of the accuracy of the date and time.

Ordinary screenshots can be challenged in court because they carry no proof of when they were taken or whether they have been altered. In the United Kingdom there is an unusually strong answer to that. The trust services chapter of eIDAS is now UK assimilated law, and the assimilated Regulation treats an EU qualified service as qualified here, so a qualified electronic time stamp enjoys a rebuttable presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and the integrity of the data to which it is bound. Alongside that, in England and Wales the Civil Evidence Act 1995 governs how statements in documents are proved and weighed, while under the Civil Procedure Rules the authenticity of a disclosed document is deemed admitted unless the other side serves a notice to prove it, by the deadline for witness statements or within 7 days of disclosure, whichever is later.

ProofSnap addresses this by creating a forensic evidence package containing a SHA-256 hash that shows whether the content has been modified, an RSA-4096 digital signature over the manifest, an eIDAS qualified timestamp on the plans that include it (issued by Disig a.s., a Qualified Trust Service Provider on the EU Trusted List), a Bitcoin blockchain anchor (not on Essential) and full metadata including the URL and the capture time in UTC. The presumption goes to the time and the integrity of the data rather than to admissibility in the round, so a court still applies the CPR and weighs the evidence. The whole workflow is shown screen by screen in how to capture a web page as evidence.

Yes. The small claims court, formally the small claims track of the County Court, is where it tends to matter most, because you present the evidence yourself with no solicitor to argue authenticity for you. Put the signed PDF in the bundle as your exhibit and keep the ZIP available. The PDF is readable on its own, so a district judge does not have to run anything to follow it, and the hashes and the manifest are there if the other side says the page never said what you claim.

The practical point is that a small claim is usually decided at a short hearing, on the documents the parties have filed. There is no time to reconstruct what a listing, an advert or a chat said months ago, and the party who can produce the page as it stood, with the date fixed by something other than their own word, is in a materially better position than the party describing it from memory. This describes the small claims track of the County Court in England and Wales; the simple procedure in Scotland and the small claims procedure in Northern Ireland are separate regimes.

No. Nothing in the Civil Procedure Rules or the law of evidence requires a web page to be notarised before a court in England and Wales will look at it. Under the notice-to-prove rule the authenticity of a disclosed document is deemed admitted unless the other side serves a notice to prove it, so in most cases the question never arises at all.

A notary helps only in a narrow band of cases, and it is worth understanding what one actually gets you. A notary attests what was shown to them, on the day, in their presence. They do not hash the file, so nothing in the certificate lets anyone check months later that the copy you are producing is byte-identical to the one that was certified. They charge per document, and getting an appointment takes long enough that a page can be edited or deleted while you wait.

A ProofSnap package attacks the same problem from the other end and does so in seconds: a SHA-256 hash of every file, an RSA-4096 signed manifest, the public key in the package, a chain of custody, an OpenTimestamps anchor (not on Essential) and, where the plan includes it, a qualified timestamp carrying the eIDAS presumption in UK assimilated law. If your matter needs a notary for some separate reason, the two are not alternatives and you can do both.

Whether to apply is a question for your solicitor. What to preserve first is not, and it is the step that gets skipped. An application to identify an anonymous poster takes weeks, and the account can be deleted before the order is granted, whether by the poster, the platform or a moderator. If that happens you may end up with an order and nothing left to attach it to.

Capture the material before you do anything that alerts the poster: the post itself, the full thread or comment chain around it, the account profile with its handle, display name, join date, follower count and any other posts you may need, and the URL of each. Capture the page as it appears to the public rather than only to you. Do the same for any republication you have found, because reach matters to a defamation claim and a republication may be gone before disclosure. Then instruct your solicitor. The jurisdiction described here is England and Wales; the equivalent order in Scotland is sought under a different procedure.

ProofSnap uses three layers of cryptographic protection:

1. SHA-256 Hashing: Every file in the evidence package is hashed. Changing even a single pixel or character produces a completely different hash, making any tampering immediately detectable.
2. Digital Signature: The manifest (listing all files and their hashes) is digitally signed with a private key. The corresponding public key is included for anyone to verify the signature.
3. Blockchain Timestamp: The manifest hash is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps, proving the manifest existed no later than the anchor time. It cannot be backdated, and it is included on every plan except Essential.

Together, these mechanisms create a chain of integrity that shows the evidence has not been altered since capture and existed no later than the anchor time. Anyone can check this; see how to verify a ProofSnap evidence package.

Forensic mode is an optional, deeper level of capture included in the Professional, Enterprise and Company plans (not in Essential or the SnapPacks).

It adds a complete archive of the page's network layer: every HTTP request and response (network.har), a WARC copy of the page, all loaded resources, and the TLS session and certificate details. To capture this, ProofSnap attaches the browser’s debugger (the browser shows a “being debugged” banner).

Every one of those files is hashed into the RSA-4096 signed manifest, so the OpenTimestamps blockchain anchor and the eIDAS qualified timestamp cover the network archive exactly as they cover the screenshot. Step by step: how to use forensic mode.