Damage changes Water dries, the ceiling gets repaired, the car goes to the garage. By the time the adjuster arrives, what they see is no longer what happened.
A dated proof stays Photos and video sealed on the day fix how everything looked, with a date that depends neither on your phone nor on your word.
Cents against the payout What is at stake is hundreds or thousands of euros. Sealing the photos of the incident costs cents. Today, nothing.
The scene
“The adjuster will come on Thursday.”
Sunday night. A dark stain spreads across the bathroom ceiling and water drips onto the hallway floorboards. You turn off the stopcock, put down buckets and towels, call your insurer. They give you a claim number and an appointment: the adjuster will come on Thursday.
On Monday the plumber opens up the ceiling to find the leak. By Tuesday three more floorboards have lifted, and with the water off the stain on the ceiling has almost gone. On Thursday the adjuster arrives, looks around, takes notes and stops in the hallway.
“This part of the floor looks older. That would be wear and tear, not the incident.”
You know the floor was fine on Sunday. You have photos, some blurred, others forwarded on WhatsApp to the managing agent. But you can’t say which one is from when, and the conversation is no longer about the leak: it is about whether they believe you.
The ritual: on the same day, before you call the insurer
- First, what is urgent: turn off the water or the power, protect what you can and keep people away. The proof never comes before safety, and limiting the damage is in your interest too.
- Before you clean, dry or move anything that is not urgent, photograph each piece of damage in three shots: a wide one of the room, a medium one that places it, and a close-up. If you had to move something, photograph where it was as well.
- Record one continuous video, without cuts, walking through the affected area and the rooms around it. It is the hardest damage verification to dispute: nobody can say you picked only the photos that suited you.
- Photograph the cause if you can see it (the pipe, the broken window, the fallen tile, the forced door, the dent in the car) and everything damaged as a result: ceilings, floors, furniture, appliances, clothes, papers. Keep the damaged parts if you can.
- Gather what gives the damage its value: receipts for what was ruined, the policy, the claim number and the repair quote when it arrives. If you have no receipts, photos of the items and a dated written list with brand and approximate year.
- On the same day, before you call the insurer if you can: put the photos, the video and the list in a ZIP and seal it on Sellat from your phone. It takes less time than the hold music. What counts is the date on the seal, not the one in your gallery.
- Every document that arrives later — the quote, the repair invoice, the technician’s report — seal it on the day you receive it. Each one keeps its own date.
- With a free account, group everything into an evidence file and share its link with the adjuster, the claims handler or your broker. They open it without signing up, in their own language, and see which files existed and on which date.
Only need to fix the date of a few photos, without the whole ritual? How to certify a photo with a date and time →
What Sellat proves to the insurer
Sellat does not decide whether the incident is covered, what the repair is worth, or which part is new damage and which is wear and tear. Your policy, the adjuster and, if it comes to it, an agreement or a judge decide that.
Sellat proves one specific thing: that those exact photos, that video and those documents existed on the date you sealed them, and that nobody has modified them since. It is technical evidence about exact files, which anyone can check. With it, “the floor was fine on Sunday” stops depending on your memory and on the date your phone shows.
Seal them before you send them to the insurer on WhatsApp.
Many insurers, brokers and managing agents ask for the photos over WhatsApp or through their app. When you send them, the image is compressed again: what arrives is no longer the file you took, it has different bytes and a different fingerprint. Send them, of course. But seal the originals first, exactly as they come out of the camera: they are the ones the proof identifies, and the ones you will need to keep.
What you keep, and what the adjuster sees
When you seal, you receive the PDF certificate and your proof package by email: the exact file that was sealed, its fingerprint, the date and the instructions so that anyone can check it without trusting you or Sellat. Keep it with the policy and the claim number.
With an account you can go one step further: group the proofs of the incident into an evidence file and switch its link on. The adjuster or the insurer opens it without signing up and sees, file by file, what existed and on which date, with the check carried out in front of them. In the normal flow Sellat does not keep your originals after creating the proof; if you turn on custody, which is optional, it keeps them too.
The claim report says what happened. Sellat proves which photos you had, and when.
When you report the claim, the insurer writes down your account and a date: the date of your call. What happened between the incident and the adjuster’s visit is left out, and that is exactly where the damage changes. Phone photos should cover that gap, but their date is set by the phone, it can be changed, and WhatsApp strips it when you forward them.
Sealing your photos does for them what the claim report does for your account: it fixes a date that does not depend on you. The insurer does not need to accept anything or even know you have done it. If the assessment is disputed, the proof is already there, with its date.
-
original/<archivo> If the original is kept
Your file, byte for byte
The exact photo you sealed, in a folder of its own so no other file in the package can be mistaken for it. It travels inside when the original is available: the upload that created the proof, or custody.
-
certificado-<id>.pdf Always
The readable certificate
The PDF you show a person or attach to a filing. It is an informative document: what actually gets checked is the file, not the PDF. If the file carried Content Credentials (C2PA), the certificate records them too — who signed, with which tool and whether they declare AI use — exactly as your browser read them when you protected it.
-
proof.json Once the batch is anchored
The portable proof
Your file fingerprint, its Merkle leaf and inclusion path, the batch root and the public transaction that records it. This is the piece that lets anyone check everything without Sellat.
-
sello-cualificado-<id>.tsr With a qualified seal
The qualified seal
The RFC 3161 response from the qualified timestamping authority, exactly as it was issued. This is the file that fixes the date under eIDAS.
-
autoridad-sellado.pem With a qualified seal
Who signed the seal
That authority signing certificate, with its SHA-256 written into the README. It travels inside so the check works offline and nobody has to go looking for it.
-
anclaje-bitcoin.ots Once the batch is anchored
The Bitcoin anchor
The OpenTimestamps proof of the batch root. It may still be waiting for a block: it is a valid file and whoever receives it can upgrade it themselves.
-
LEEME.txt / README.txt Always
The instructions, in two languages
What each file is, what it proves and what it does not, and the exact commands to check it. In Spanish and English, so an expert or a lawyer never has to ask you anything.
The seal is signed by FNMT-RCM, not by Sellat.
Sellat is not the party attesting the time. The qualified seal is issued by a qualified timestamping authority of the FNMT-RCM, and its signing certificate travels inside your package. We are the intermediary that joins your fingerprint to that seal and hands it to you in a tidy folder.
It checks out without us and without the internet.
With the seal and the authority certificate inside the ZIP, the date is verified with standard tools on the machine of whoever receives it. If Sellat disappeared tomorrow, your package would still check out.
Seal the photos on the day of the incident. Not on the day the adjuster arrives.
What is at stake is a payout. The proof of how everything looked costs cents; today, nothing. Two minutes from your phone, before the damage changes.
Seal the damage photos Documenting damage for insurance: photos, video and receipts with a date
Documenting damage for insurance is half the job. The other half is being able to show, weeks later, that the photos were taken when you say. Photos for a damage claim — water, storm, fire, burglary, a knock to the car — are worth more the closer to the incident they are taken, as long as their date doesn’t depend on anyone’s word. For a home insurance claim, evidence like this is the hardest to recreate afterwards: by then the damage has dried, been repaired or been thrown away.
Technical detail, in case you need it: Sellat computes the SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact file (the ZIP with your photos, video and receipts), records it in a public reference on Polygon and on Bitcoin via OpenTimestamps, and sends you a PDF certificate and a verification ZIP. In the normal flow the original file is not kept after the proof is created: only its fingerprint, from which the content cannot be rebuilt. With an account you can calculate the fingerprint on your device (Sellat Local), group the proofs into an evidence file with a shareable link, or turn on custody so Sellat keeps the original too. Anyone can check the proof with the exact file, without an account and without trusting Sellat.
