Proving when a file existed

This is written guidance from mydeposits, for people using its resolution service. It is one scheme's own page. It is not a rule for every deposit scheme, and it is not about any app.

Photographs should support the written description in a check-in report or inventory. They should not be the only evidence. If you rely on your computer's properties page to show when a photograph was taken, also provide a print of that page. The date may be lost when the file is uploaded.

Photographs and video used in a resolution need to be authenticated, so the date they were taken can be shown. If they are not date stamped, an adjudicator cannot check when they were taken. The practice asked for is to put the photographs in the inventory and condition report, to get the tenant's signature at the start and the end of the tenancy, and to have the date stamped on the photo.

mydeposits provides a resolution service to its members and their tenants. The lines above are for that service.

Existamp is a separate app. Its home page was open at the address below. It does not say that a deposit scheme, a court or a hire company accepts a receipt. Whoever settles a dispute decides what evidence they accept.

On 21 Oct 2026 the home page at move-in-proof.vercel.app called the app Move-in Proof. On 22 Oct 2026 that address called it Existamp. On 26 Oct 2026 that address did not open. The home page open that day is the address below.

A receipt proves that these exact files existed, unchanged, by the time shown on the receipt.

It does not prove that what a file shows or says is true, or that a scene was not staged.

It does not prove who took the photos or made the files, or where.

It is not legal advice. Whoever settles a dispute, such as a deposit scheme, a court or a hire company, decides what evidence it accepts.

Your files never leave your phone or computer. We only receive the set's fingerprint, a string of letters and numbers worked out from the files that can't be turned back into them.

The phone makes one fingerprint for the whole set, and that fingerprint is what is timestamped. The timestamp page shows one prepared example of that kind of tie. The files in the example are short stand-in texts, not photographs.