Screenshots vs Proof: what actually holds up when a buyer disputes

When a remote sale goes sideways, the question is never "did you take photos?" It is "can you show that both of us agreed to the same thing, before it shipped?" That is a higher bar, and it is the one that actually settles arguments.

The three weak points of a screenshot

• Editable: a cropped or re-saved image is a different file than the original.
• One-sided: your saved thread only shows your side pressed send.
• Context-free: forwards lose the order of events and the agreement around them.

What raises the bar

A record is hard to dispute when it has all three of these at once:

• A hash on the original file. Proof stores a SHA-256 hash of each photo, so a later edit to the file is detectable.
• Dual confirmation. Both parties Confirm by email, so the record is not one person's claim.
• A stable, shareable link. One /p link shows the terms, the photos, and both confirmation times.

What it is not

Being honest about the boundary is part of the trust:

• It is not notarization or a court filing.
• It is not a certified timestamp — capture time is whatever the device reported.
• Hashes only detect changes after the file was stored; they do not prove what a camera saw.

Used the right way, that is enough for the everyday case: a shared record both sides confirmed, so a later "not as described" starts from agreement instead of from zero.