This page is for anyone who must decide whether to trust photos in Venzeo™, such as a claims, risk or legal team.
A certified report is a report whose photos, time and GPS position Venzeo™ can confirm. Venzeo™ certifies only reports sent from the Venzeo™ mobile app on a device that passes its security checks, and only when your organisation has a licence.
Why a browser, email or upload cannot be certified
A photo file cannot prove when or where it was taken. It can be old, taken somewhere else, edited, or made by AI. A web page that uses the phone camera cannot prove this either. The browser cannot show Venzeo™ that the device and the camera are genuine.
That is why photos from outside the app are never certified:
- A report created in the web interface carries the label Web report > without certification. See Creating a report on the web.
- Photos sent by email have no certification at all.
A Venzeo™ Request also runs in the mobile app. The link in the SMS opens the Venzeo™ app, or the app store to install it first. So photos from a customer or client are certified in the same way as photos from your own team. See Requesting photos from someone outside your team by SMS.
What the app checks
The app takes the photo itself and records the time and GPS position at that moment. The device and the app must then pass extensive Venzeo™ Intelligence integrity tests.
If all tests pass and your organisation has a licence, the report is Certified. If a test fails, it shows Warning!. If Venzeo™ does not have enough data to decide, for example on an older Android version, the report has no certification label. Without a licence, reports show Not certified unlicensed report. For the devices that can create certified reports, see Mobile device requirements (Android and iOS).
Photos of printed pictures and screens
Certification confirms the device, the app, the time and the place. When your organisation has a licence, Venzeo™ Intelligence also detects photos of printed paper or of a screen, instead of the real scene, and reports this in the certification of the report. The recorded time and position give you one more check. For example, a photo of car damage taken in an office at night does not match the claim.
A Venzeo™ report as evidence
A court, an insurer or another party receives a complete Venzeo™ report: all its photos and an explanation of its certification. It carries far more information than a single photo from an ordinary camera app or camera. The report includes:
- the original photo, kept even after someone edits it in the web interface (Show original);
- the certified time and GPS position of each photo;
- the certification of the report, which an organisation with a licence can include in a PDF with Show Venzeo™ certification;
- the audit log of changes to the report. See Checking who changed a report in the audit log.
If a report is not certified, see Reports show Warning! or no certification label.