Dates (Low severity)
What this means: Indicates when a file has been edited after it was created.
Recommended Action: This signal is not strong enough to reject an entire on its own and should be used in combination with another signal.
Malformed date (Low severity)
What this means: Metadata dates can appear in a variety of different formats depending on the software used to create the file, for example 2023-01-23 18:45:21+00:00 and 23rd Jan 2023 18:45:21+Z. Modifying a file with consumer tools can lead to a malformed date format where it’s not possible to determine the ‘actual’ underlying point in time, for example 1970-0-0.
Recommended Action: This signal is not strong enough to reject an entire on its own and should be used in combination with another signal.
Annotation Dates (Medium severity)
What this means: PDF sometimes come with annotations, which sometimes include date information. Finding a date inconsistency can be evidence that the document was modified after initial creation.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend reviewing the document carefully and requesting additional documentation if possible.
EXIF issue (High severity)
What this means: It’s possible to modify or wipe metadata from files without changing the file's content. When the intention is to remove signs of fraud from the metadata, such as a date mismatch or the presence of a consumer image editing tool, this is a clear sign of fraud.
Recommended Action: If an EXIF issue appears, you should most likely reject the document.
Software (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates the software used to create the document.
Recommended Action: If a software package such as Adobe Photoshop appears, you should reject the document.
Added Text (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if text has been added to the document using Photoshop, and displays the specific text that has been added.
Recommended Action: If colored highlighting result shows a key detail has been added, you should reject the document.
Adobe Fonts (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates if a document has been edited using an Adobe product.
Recommended Action: This is a medium-strength signal of fraud, and the document should be rejected if it is an official document from an institution such as a bank or utility provider.
Edited after Scan (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates if a document has been edited after it was scanned.
Recommended Action: This is a medium-strength signal of fraud, and the document should be rejected if it is an official document from an institution such as a bank or utility provider.
Blacklists (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if a name, address or phone number has been found on your applicant blacklist.
Recommended Action: Reject if an entity match is accurate (>90%).
X-ray (High severity)
What this means: Shows the previous version of a document if it exists.
Recommended Action: This is a strong signal of fraud and should be rejected if you can see that key details have been tampered.
Seen Before (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates if you have processed the same document before.
Recommended Action: You should reject the document unless the document was uploaded twice on purpose.
Masking (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if a piece of text is being masked maliciously.
Recommended Action: This is a strong signal of fraud and the document should be rejected. Often the masked text can be seen by selecting around the mask or using the “Text” tab.
Overlaid Text (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if the text has been added over an image on a document.
Recommended Action: If the overlaid text shows a key detail has been edited, you should reject the document. False-positive may occur on bank statements that show checks or if all the text on the document is being highlighted.
Edited Text (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if a piece of text has been edited nearby. Unlike Overlaid Text and other methods, the edited text is less accurate at pinpointing the exact text has been changed.
Recommended Action: If the edited text shows a key detail has been edited, or if there is a key detail near the result, you should reject the document.
Font Issues (High severity)
What this means: Indicates when more than one font has been used in a word or in a particular text section (see screenshot example).
Recommended Action: Reject the document if the font discrepancy appears on a key detail. False positives may occur around bold fonts or unusual punctuations, both of which should be ignored—especially if the text flagged is not important information.
Fingerprint (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates if a document does not conform to the expected characteristics of the banking institution Inscribe identified. This currently applies to ~60 different banking institutions.
Recommended Action: Can be a strong enough signal to reject a document if it is one of the supported statements. False positives may occur with collated documents, or anything that has been non-maliciously changed with an editor as that may alter the fonts.
Brush Detection (Low severity)
What this means: Indicates if a photo editor has been used to hide forgeries. It works by finding constant regions in images that look like someone digitally covered over some text in a document and replaced it with their own.
Recommended Action: If you see this result near a key detail, we would recommend rejecting the document. False positives can occur in low-quality images.
PDF Alignment (Medium severity)
What this means: Indicates if a name or address is misaligned by examining where the first character starts.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Templates (High severity)
What this means: Indicates if the submitted document matches a template document sourced from a website commonly used to generate or create fake documents.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Flattened PDF (Medium severity)
What this means: When a True PDF is modified, it is sometimes converted to an image format. For classes of documents where we know that they’re typically issued as True PDF, receiving a PDF in image format that looks like a True PDF is suspicious.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Font Anomaly (Medium severity)
What this means: The document contains fonts that we wouldn't expect to see in that type of document, based on similar documents we have seen before. For example, Bank of America statements have a standard collection of fonts used, and if we identify other fonts were used in the document, it may be considered an anomaly.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Metadata anomaly (Low severity)
What this means: Similar to Font Anomalies (see above), we may indicate if there is metadata present that is anomalous or unexpected for the document in question. For example, by accepting thousands of Bank of America statements from our customers, we learn over time what the expected values of “Creator”, “Producer”, etc. are within the metadata. If we receive a Bank of America statement with a different value from what we expect, it can be an indication that modifications have been made to the document.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Name Format anomaly (Medium severity)
What this means: The Name data is parsed from the document, and the format (i.e. uppercase, lowercase, mixed case) is compared against what’s expected for similar documents.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Address Format anomaly (Medium severity)
What this means: The Address data is parsed from the document, and the format (i.e. uppercase, lowercase, mixed case) is compared against what’s expected for similar documents.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Date Format anomaly (Medium severity)
What this means: The Address data is parsed from the document, and the format (e.g. "Jan 1 2023" vs. "January 1, 2023") is compared against what’s expected for similar documents.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
Amount Format anomaly (Medium severity)
What this means: The Amount data is parsed from the document, and the format (i.e. missing commas, currency symbols) is compared against what’s expected for similar documents.
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
CopyCat text (High severity)
What this means: When compared to other documents in our database, the text content of the document is suspiciously similar to the text content of other documents which have a different associated identity (different names, same text content).
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.
CopyCat image (High severity)
What this means: When compared to other documents in our database, the document is suspiciously similar to other documents which have a different associated identity (different names, but are visually very similar).
Recommended Action: If you see this result, we would recommend rejecting the document.