That a specific file, with a specific content fingerprint, was deposited by a specific account on a specific date, and that the descriptive details shown were supplied at that time. It does not prove the document is accurate, authorised or true.

A SHA-256 hash: a short string calculated from every byte of the file. Change one character and the string changes completely. Because we publish it, anyone holding a copy can confirm their copy is identical to the deposited one, using ordinary free tools and without trusting us.

No. Every record is listed and verifiable, but you choose whether the file is open to all, released only on request, or not served at all. The fingerprint is published in all three cases.

Yes. Access mode can be changed at any time without affecting the reference or the fingerprints.

Yes. That is an embargo. You set the day and time the descriptive detail becomes public and the day and time the document becomes available, in a time zone you choose; they may be the same. Release happens by itself when the time arrives. Nothing about the deposit is delayed — the reference, the deposit date, the fingerprint and the certificate date are all fixed when you deposit, so an embargoed record proves as much about your document’s date as one published immediately. During the embargo you choose whether the record’s existence is acknowledged, meaning anyone with the reference sees that a deposit exists with its deposit and release dates and nothing more, or hidden completely, meaning the reference does not resolve for anyone until release. You may bring a release forward or end the embargo at any time; putting a release date back is not something you can do yourself, because a release date that keeps moving is not an embargo. An embargo may carry a charge in addition to the retention plan, shown to you before you set it and not collected while payments are disabled. You may also name up to five people to be told at release; see nominating people to be told, and following a record by RSS, which works during an acknowledged embargo.

Yes. While a record is under embargo you can issue an Embargo Certificate from your dashboard: a serialised, one or two page PDF you hand or send to whoever must hold something now for a document that opens later. It states the reference, the deposit date, the fingerprints, your publisher name and IPSQA Ltd as the operator of the register, and it carries no part of the document — the document stays with the register and is released by it at the time you set, so the paper cannot open anything early and gives its holder no access they would not otherwise have.

You choose the name printed on it, which need not be the document's title, so under a hidden embargo a certificate can read Mathematics 201, final examination while the register discloses nothing. You choose whether the release date is printed or withheld, and where it is withheld a holder checking it online is told only that it is genuine and not yet released. You may name the holder on the face of it, print up to five addresses of your own, add a note to the holder, and set either a date after which the copy should be reissued or a time after which the document should not be used. The serial is checkable by anyone, free and without an account, at the address printed on the certificate. Issue a replacement and a holder checking the earlier serial is told it has been superseded; withdraw one and anyone checking it is told it was withdrawn and shown the reason you gave, which is how a holder learns the arrangement changed without being telephoned.

There is no separate fee for a certificate. Embargo Certificates are covered by the embargo surcharge you paid when the record was deposited, and you may issue as many as the arrangement needs — one for each party who must hold something, plus replacements when a holder’s copy needs reissuing. Withdrawing and replacing them costs nothing either.

Typical uses are examinations and proctoring, press and research embargoes, sealed bids, continuity briefs, and findings with a release date. Issuing certificates in bulk from one record, one per candidate or per centre, is not built yet — today each one is issued individually from the dashboard.

An RSS feed is a plain, machine-readable list of what has happened to a record, published at a web address of its own. RecordMark publishes one for every record in Atom, the standard used alongside RSS, so any RSS reader understands it. You copy the record’s feed address — it is printed on the deposit certificate, shown with a copy button in Share this record on your dashboard, and linked from the record’s own page — and paste it into a reader. The reader checks that address periodically and shows you anything new: a further version, a correction to the descriptive detail, a change of access, a published or withdrawn screening result, a withdrawal, and the release of an embargo. Nothing is emailed, no account with us is needed, and we are not told who is following a record. There is also a feed of recently published records at /feed if you want to follow the service rather than one document. Because a feed is only a copy of what the record’s public page already shows, following one never reveals a closed document or an unpublished result.

Setting it up in classic Outlook — the desktop Outlook that comes with Microsoft Office, where a RSS Feeds folder appears in the folder list:

1. On your dashboard, open Share this record on the record you want to follow and press Copy feed.
2. In Outlook, right-click the RSS Feeds folder in the folder list and choose Add a New RSS Feed. If you cannot see that folder, use File → Account Settings → Account Settings → the RSS Feeds tab → New.
3. Paste the address you copied and press Add, then Yes to confirm.
4. A folder for the record appears under RSS Feeds. Each change to the record arrives in it like an ordinary message. Nothing is sent to you by us — Outlook is fetching the public page itself.

If you use the new Outlook, Outlook on the web, or Outlook 2024, Microsoft has removed RSS support, so there is no folder to add a feed to (Microsoft’s own instructions state this). Two ways round it, both free: install Thunderbird and add the address there, or create a free account with a reader such as Feedly or Inoreader, paste the address in, and turn on that reader’s own email alerts if you want the change to reach your inbox. On a Mac, NetNewsWire is free and needs no account. On a phone, any RSS reader app will take the same address.

If you would rather not use a reader at all, open the feed address in a browser and bookmark it, or simply revisit the record’s page — the feed adds convenience, not information.

Following a record for years, or one that has not opened yet — this matters for embargoed records and posthumous messages, where the interesting change may be a decade away. Commercial readers often prune a feed that returns errors or goes quiet, so a subscription you set today may not survive that long. Two ways round it:

• FreshRSS — free and open-source, and you run it yourself, so nothing decides on your behalf that a feed is stale. It polls each address on the schedule your own server keeps, logs an error without unsubscribing you, and it is not required to be a browser tab: it publishes both the Google Reader and Fever APIs, so a phone app such as any Google Reader-compatible client can point at your own install and raise push alerts. Hosting it needs a server and someone comfortable maintaining one.
• PageCrawl — hosted, nothing to run, and built to watch an address for change over the long term rather than to read a feed. It will keep checking an address at the interval you set, and can track a feed as a structured list or watch the record page itself, alerting you by email or a webhook into Slack or Discord the moment something appears. Useful where you want to be told the day an embargoed record releases and cannot rely on a reader still being subscribed by then.

Both are third parties with no connection to RecordMark, named because people ask; we do not endorse them, take anything for the mention, or see who is watching a record. The reference itself is the durable part — a person who has only the reference can check the record at any point in the future without a feed, a reader or an account.

Yes, and without you sending anything. Every record has an RSS feed address beside its web address, printed on the deposit certificate and shown with a copy button on your dashboard. Anyone you give it to can follow the record in an ordinary RSS reader, and it announces a new version, a correction to the descriptive detail, a change of access, published screening results and the lifting of an embargo. The feed carries only what the record’s public page already carries, so it never discloses a closed document or an unpublished result. A hidden embargoed record has no feed until it releases; if you want people following it beforehand, acknowledge its existence instead of hiding it.

You may name up to five people to be told when a record is released. In doing so you confirm you may give us their address for that purpose. We use it only to send that notice, every notice says who nominated them and how to be removed, and the addresses are deleted 90 days after release. Notices are sent at release, not before. If sending is suspended the nominations are held and nothing goes out until it resumes. The feed address works now and is not affected.

You can use it for a timed release, with two limits you should understand before relying on it. First, release is by date alone. RecordMark has no way of knowing whether you are alive, so nothing is triggered by your death or by inactivity — you set a date, and if you are still here you move it. Second, most countries still require the original signed, wet-ink will, and a deposit is not a will and confers no legal effect. What a deposit does well is prove that a particular document existed in particular words on a particular date, so the sound use is a closed backup copy of the signed will, or a letter of wishes, whose text states where the signed original is held and with whom. Tell your executor the reference. If you would rather nothing be visible at all beforehand, deposit it closed and hidden under an embargo.

No. Verification is open to anyone, free, and requires no sign-in.

Yes. Descriptive details can be edited by the publisher, and the deposit certificate is rebuilt to match. The document fingerprint is unaffected, because the file has not changed.

The replacement becomes a new version with its own fingerprint. The earlier version stays on the record. A reader can see that the document was superseded, and when.

The file can be withdrawn from distribution. The deposit itself is append-only and is not erased, because a service whose history can be rewritten proves nothing. Where the law requires removal of personal data, we act on that; the retention terms explain how.

We stop undertaking to serve the file. The reference, fingerprints and deposit history remain, so a copy you hold can still be checked.

It can. RecordMark is operated from New Zealand by IPSQA Ltd and is subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. Where we offer the service to publishers in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, or monitor people there, the EU GDPR or UK GDPR applies to that activity as well. We do not hold, and do not claim, any GDPR certification, seal or approved code of conduct.

Not yet. Article 27 requires a controller outside the EU that targets people in the EU to appoint a representative there, and the UK GDPR requires the same for the UK. That appointment has not been made. It is on the list of things to settle before the service is marketed in Europe, and until it is, publishers in the EEA or UK should treat this as a service that is not yet fully set up for them. We would rather say that than imply an arrangement that does not exist.

The database and deposited files are held in Germany (Frankfurt), inside the European Union; they were held in Singapore until 14 September 2026. Hosting, email and screening services run in the United States and elsewhere. The processors register in the privacy notice names every provider, the country, and whether a written data-processing agreement is in place or is still being obtained. Some are still being obtained, and the register says so — we do not describe an agreement as in place before it is. New Zealand holds an EU adequacy decision, which is relevant to us as the controller, but it does not by itself cover onward transfers to providers outside New Zealand and the EEA; those depend on the processor terms recorded in that register.

For the publisher's own account and record, performance of the contract with them. For keeping the deposit entry and its fingerprints verifiable to the public, our legitimate interest in operating a verification service that cannot be quietly rewritten, which is the entire point of it. Where a deposited document contains other people's personal information, the publisher is responsible for having a basis to publish it, and the deposit declaration requires them to state what that basis is before the record goes live.

Ask us and a person will assess it. What we can do without argument is stop serving the document, remove your details from the descriptive text and search index, and anonymise correspondence. What we resist is deleting a deposit entry outright, because a verification service whose history can be erased proves nothing; the GDPR itself recognises limits on erasure where processing is necessary for archiving and for establishing or defending legal claims. Where the law requires removal, we remove. We will tell you which of those applies to your request rather than hiding behind a general policy. Start at complaints and takedown.

Yes. Ask from your account page and a person closes it. The account goes: your sign-in, your name and contact details, your saved nominees, and the wording of anything you sent us. Records you already deposited stay published and keep verifying, detached from you — a certificate already issued has to keep working, and others may be relying on the deposit. Nobody can then manage those records, and anyone trying to contact you through one is told plainly that the depositor has closed their account. We keep, with no name attached, which version of the Conditions of Use you accepted and when, because that is what the deposits themselves rest on. A draft you have not published holds your own file, so delete or publish it first; if you own an organisation, hand it over first. Closure cannot be undone.

Email info@recordmark.app with enough detail to find the data. We will confirm receipt, may ask for proof of identity where the request concerns an account, and aim to respond within 30 days — the GDPR's one month and the New Zealand Act's 20 working days. If you are unhappy with the outcome you can complain to the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner, or to your own supervisory authority where the GDPR applies.

No statutory data protection officer is appointed; we do not consider the service to meet the Article 37 thresholds, and enquiries go to info@recordmark.app. There is no automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effect. Integrity screening is run only when a publisher asks for it, produces a statistical indication rather than a decision, and no outcome on the service is determined by it.

The retention schedule in the privacy notice publishes every category, the period, the basis and what happens at the end of it. Several categories are enforced automatically by a daily job rather than by anyone remembering: screening free text is removed 90 days after a check, enquiries after two years, access-request reasons and decision notes are anonymised at their retention date, and payment webhook payloads are deleted after a year.

It is an optional check on the text of a deposited document, carried out by a third-party provider and reported on the record exactly as that provider reported it. Two checks are offered. AI writing detection estimates whether the text shows signs of machine generation. Similarity checking compares the text against other sources to show whether material is quoted and cited or reproduced. AI writing detection is connected and runs on Pangram Labs, whose published developer rate of five cents per hundred words our pricing is built on. Naming a provider is a statement of fact about who runs the check, not a partnership or an endorsement by them. Similarity checking has no provider connected yet, so it cannot be bought and no text is sent for it. A result is tied to the single file examined, never alters that file, stays private until you publish it, and carries the provider and model name beside it wherever it is shown.

That is what Pre-Check does: the same screening, run on a document that is not being deposited, so you can see the result before you commit anything to a record. It is ordered on the Pre-Check page, paid for before the text is sent, and needs an account. A Pre-Check produces no reference, no QR code and no directory entry, and it is not a RecordMark record. If you go on to deposit the document, the Pre-Check fee is credited against the deposit — once, within 30 days, and only where the file you deposit has the same fingerprint as the file that was checked. The credit belongs to whoever paid for the Pre-Check, and it reduces the deposit fee rather than being refunded in cash. Full terms are on the pricing page.

Yes: length, not file size. The checks are priced and limited by word count, because words are what they actually read. Where you order a check yourself — a Pre-Check on a document, whether or not you go on to deposit it — the cap is 30,000 words per document. The figure in force is shown on the pricing page, and a quote for a longer document is refused rather than silently truncated, so you are never charged for a check of part of your text. Charging is per 100 words with a minimum charge, so a very short document costs the minimum rather than a fraction of a cent. If you have something longer than the cap and it genuinely needs checking, write to us before depositing rather than splitting it yourself.

There is also a floor: at least 40 words of readable text must be present. The checks read the text layer of the file, not a picture of it, so a scanned document with no text layer cannot be screened at all — you will be told how few words could be read rather than charged for a check that could not work. If you need a scan screened, run it through optical character recognition first and screen the searchable version.

Pre-Check accepts a PDF or a .docx file; the older .doc format is not supported. You are shown the word count and the price before you pay, and the order can only run the document it was quoted for — a different or substantially longer file sent against the same order is refused, because it would cost more than was quoted.

No. It is optional per document, never automatic, and a record without screening is not marked down for it.

No. Results are yours to publish or keep private, and a published result can be withdrawn. Withdrawal is recorded rather than hidden, so the trail stays honest.

Because a result belongs to the exact file it examined. Carrying an old result across to a changed document would suggest something was checked when it was not. A new version is a new file, so it is screened and charged separately.

No. These tools produce statistical indications, not findings of fact. A result is evidence to be weighed, and the figures are published with that caveat attached.

Yes. Set the organisation up under Organisations and attach a draft record to it before publishing. The organisation is then shown as the publisher, and the record stays with the organisation if the person who deposited it leaves. Members hold a role — owner, publisher, archivist or viewer — and removing a member never removes or moves records the organisation has already deposited.

An owner claimed a registration number — a charity number, company number or public-body identifier — and a person here looked it up on the official register, then recorded which register was consulted and on what date. The page shows exactly that: the number, the register, and the date of the check. It is a statement about what we saw on a date. It is not an endorsement of the organisation or of anything it has deposited, and it is not a claim that the registration is still current today. The register link is on the page so you can check for yourself.

Create the organisation, then submit a claim as its owner with the registration number, the name as it appears on the register, and your role. Attach evidence if the register is not searchable online. We check it by hand. Nothing about the registration appears publicly until the check is done.

Not yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. An organisation account decides whose record it is: the record is published in the organisation's name, it survives a member leaving, and it can carry checked registered status. It does not yet decide who pays. Every deposit is paid for by card by the member making it, at the moment they make it.

There is no consolidated invoice, no purchase order, no billing contact, no account credit and no monthly statement. A reduced rate for a class of organisation, where one is offered, is applied to the rate that member pays rather than billed to the organisation — and at present no reduced rate is on offer, so a verified charity pays the same published rates as anyone else.

Consolidated billing is on our list. Until it is built, if your finance rules do not allow a card payment at the point of deposit, write to info@recordmark.app before you begin.

Where we have already checked an organisation's registration number against the official register, we can record that check in advance and issue a code. When an owner submits their claim with that code and the matching number, the claim is approved at once, carrying our earlier check forward with the register page and the date it was checked. A code only works with the number it was issued for, may be limited to a single use, and can be given an expiry date. If the code and number do not match an active pre-approval, the claim simply goes into the normal queue for a person to check.

Yes. A check carries a review date, normally twelve months after it was made. When it passes, the organisation lapses to unverified: new deposits are at the standard rate until it is checked again, the page shows the date of the last check, and records already deposited are untouched.

Yes. Search its registration number, its RecordMark organisation reference or its name under Organisations. Only organisations whose registration has been checked appear in that directory, and only records their publisher chose to list are shown.

No, and we will not let the page imply it. A deposit proves the file existed in that exact form on the date it was deposited. Where you state a document date, it is shown as the depositor's statement about the original, clearly separate from the deposit date. That is still useful for an archive — from the deposit onwards the wording cannot be quietly changed — but it is not evidence of the original date.

No. Constitutions, trust deeds, letters and register printouts you upload as evidence are held privately for the check and for our audit trail, are visible only to administrators, and are never shown on a public page. They are purged seven years after an organisation closes its account.

One fee per record, by retention period, plus optional screening. Current rates are on the pricing page. Depositing is free while card payments are being set up; a Pre-Check, which stands on its own, is paid for when it is ordered.

A coupon is issued to named publishers and covers the deposit fee, either for a set number of records or without limit, for as long as the coupon is valid. Redeem it on your dashboard. Integrity screening is charged separately and is not covered by a coupon unless the coupon says so explicitly.

Anyone with an account. Depositing is open to account holders, and organisation accounts are checked against an official register before they are recognised.

IPSQA Ltd, a New Zealand limited company (company number 6789833, NZBN 9429046694799), registered office Suite 13759, Level 1, 6 Johnsonville Road, Johnsonville, Wellington 6037, New Zealand. New Zealand law governs the service terms.

A PDF, up to 100 MB. PDF is the only format at present: the certificate is produced by attaching a cover page to your document, which requires a predictable format. The size is checked in the browser before anything is uploaded and again by the register itself, so a file over the limit is refused rather than half stored. Two smaller limits sit alongside it: an optional cover image must be a PNG, JPEG or WebP of 2 MB or less — that image is presentation only, forms no part of the fingerprint, and can be changed or removed at any time after deposit under Edit details on the record — and each file of evidence uploaded to support an organisation’s registered status may be up to 15 MB.

One document per record. A record fixes one file and one fingerprint, which is what makes a reference unambiguous — a reader checking it is told exactly which bytes were deposited. That is not a limit on how much you can deposit at once, though: nothing stops you binding several documents into a single PDF and depositing that. A year of board papers as Board reports for 1987, a scheme document with its appendices, or a report with its annexes are all perfectly ordinary deposits, and they cite more cleanly than a dozen separate references. Use separate records where the documents genuinely have separate lives — different release dates, different retention, or one that may later be replaced on its own.

Where a document is superseded rather than accompanied, replace it on the same record instead of depositing a second one. The earlier version and its fingerprint stay published, so the change is visible rather than silent.

Yes — any language, any script. Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, Te Reo Māori, anything. Your PDF is never re-typeset or re-rendered: its pages are copied into the stamped file exactly as you supplied them, and the fingerprint is taken over the raw bytes of the file. The language of the document has no bearing on the strength of the record. A reader holding a copy checks it against the published fingerprint in exactly the same way, whatever it is written in.

One thing to know before you type the title. The pages RecordMark produces itself — the deposit certificate cover page and the Embargo Certificate — are drawn in English only, and the title, subtitle, publisher name and certificate label you supply are printed on them exactly as you typed them. Those pages cannot yet draw right-to-left or non-Latin scripts: Arabic comes out with its letters unjoined and in the wrong order, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Indic scripts come out blank. It is a limitation of the certificate generator, not of the deposit.

So, for now: keep the title, subtitle, publisher name and certificate label in English or in Latin transliteration, and put the text in its own script in the summary and inside the document itself, where it is reproduced faithfully. The record page, the register, search and the feeds all display any script correctly — it is only the generated PDF pages that are limited.

Nothing about the record depends on this: the reference, the dates and the fingerprints are identical whatever language the document is in. Multilingual certificates are on the list of things to build.

No. Deposited files are stored to be served under your chosen access mode and are not used to train models. Where you order screening, the text is sent to the screening provider for that purpose only.

Use report an issue. Reports are reviewed by a person. We do not edit another publisher's record on request; we can require correction, restrict distribution, or record that the record is disputed.