Screenshots get challenged in court.
ProofSnap evidence gets checked.

ProofSnap is a Chrome and Edge extension that captures web pages as legal evidence with SHA-256 hashing and a signed manifest, plus blockchain timestamping from the Professional plan up, so a later change to a timestamped 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 your evidence existed no later than the time of that Bitcoin block. The proof is independently verifiable and cannot be backdated. The blockchain timestamp is included from the Professional plan up.

ProofSnap includes a 7-day free trial with all plans. The trial requires a credit card, and you are not charged if you cancel before it ends. Choose from flexible monthly or annual subscriptions: Essential (US$8.99/month or US$80/year), Professional (US$16.99/month or US$160/year), or Enterprise (US$28.99/month or US$280/year). 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.

ProofSnap generates evidence packages with cryptographic integrity proofs and, on the Enterprise and Company plans and with an eIDAS or Video SnapPack, qualified timestamps. Admissibility depends on the forum and the facts of the case. Consult a lawyer for a specific case.

Regular screenshots can be challenged in court because they carry no proof of when they were taken or whether they have been altered. New Zealand law helps, but it does not do the work for you. Under the Evidence Act 2006, where evidence is produced by a machine, device or technical process of a kind that ordinarily does what a party asserts it does, it is presumed to have done so on the occasion in question, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. That last phrase is the opening the other side will use: put evidence to the contrary before the court and the presumption falls away. The Disputes Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal can receive evidence a court would not admit and decide on the substantial merits and justice of the case, having regard to the law, but they still weigh how reliable a record looks.

ProofSnap addresses this by creating a forensic evidence package containing a SHA-256 hash of every file, an RSA-4096 signature binding those hashes together, a blockchain timestamp proving the package existed by a given time (Professional plan and up), and full metadata including the URL and the capture time in UTC. That gives a court, a Disputes Tribunal referee or a Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator something concrete to weigh, and it gives the other side something concrete to test rather than a bare assertion. The whole workflow is shown screen by screen in how to capture a web page as evidence.

Netsafe's advice is to record the full URL and take a screenshot before the content is deleted. A plain screenshot shows the content but not when it was taken or that it is unchanged, and that is what the other side will dispute. ProofSnap captures a Facebook post, a Messenger, WhatsApp Web or Telegram Web conversation, a Trade Me listing or a webmail message as it appears in your browser, together with the URL, the capture time and SHA-256 hashes in a signed manifest. If the chat is on your phone, our team turns an exported WhatsApp chat into a line-numbered court transcript for US$59.99 (approx. NZ$107).

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, so a changed file no longer matches its recorded hash.
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 check the signature.
3. Blockchain Timestamp (Professional plan and up): The manifest hash is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps, proving the package existed no later than that block. It cannot be backdated.

Together, these mechanisms create a chain of integrity that makes a later change to the package detectable and fixes the time by which it existed. Anyone can check this; see how to verify a ProofSnap evidence package.

Under Article 41(2) of the eIDAS Regulation, a qualified electronic timestamp carries a presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and of the integrity of the bound data, and nothing beyond that. The presumption is a rule of EU law, so it does not bind a New Zealand court. There the weight comes from the Evidence Act 2006 presumption, and the qualified timestamp adds independent, checkable proof of the time.

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

Forensic mode 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 server's TLS certificate details. To capture that, ProofSnap attaches the 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 on Enterprise and Company, cover the network archive exactly as they cover the screenshot. Step by step: how to use forensic mode.

File evidence.pdf as your document, because it is the readable summary of the capture: the screenshot, the URL, the capture time and the hashes. Keep the whole ZIP unchanged alongside it. A referee, a judge or the other side can then check the package in the Trust Verifier, or offline with the verification scripts inside the ZIP, and confirm that the files still match the signed manifest.