Inscribe performs best on fully-digital PDF files that we call 'True PDFs'. These are documents that come with rich metadata, such as information about the fonts present and the version history of the document. Most document providers issue their documents as True PDFs.

A common occurrence when edits are made to a True PDF with image editing tools is that the document is 'flattened'. The document retains the appearance of a True PDF, but the rich metadata is lost.

Inscribe will notify you when we believe a document has been flattened with the Flattened PDF signal:

Currently, this signal on its own is not sufficient to flag a document as fraudulent, and simply serves as a warning that a full set of document metadata is not present.