Three frauds. Three defenses.

Document fraud rarely needs advanced technology. Mostly it needs one thing: a checker who does not know where to look. This page shows the three most common frauds and the defense against each — short enough to remember in the second you are holding the document.

Fraud 1

The altered document

A certificate looks complete in every way. Right paper, right seal, right signature. Only one line differs from the original — a grade changed, an expiry date moved, a name swapped. The human eye cannot tell, because everything around that text is genuine.

Grade: A → B

Invalid

A digital signature works differently from a rubber stamp: it covers every character of the record. Change even one — a single grade, a single digit — and the signature no longer matches the content. Verification answers "Invalid," every time, without exception. A forger can change the content, but cannot produce a new signature covering the changed content, because they do not hold the signer's key.

Scan it — changed content always fails.

Fraud 2

The lookalike verifier

When altered content cannot pass verification, the forger changes target: not the document, but the checking page itself. A website with the same colors, the same buttons, the same green light — different in only one way: it answers "Valid" no matter what you feed it. And the QR code on a forged document can take you straight there, because a QR is only a doorway — and a forged door opens onto a forged room.

veriv.org/verify real site

veriv-check.example fake site

The one thing a forger cannot imitate is the real site's address. Every pixel of the page can be faked; the browser's address bar belongs to your device, not to the page. So after every scan, look up once.

Look at the address bar — only veriv.org counts.

Fraud 3

A real QR on the wrong document

The subtlest fraud forges nothing at all. The forger takes a genuine QR code — cut from someone else's real document — and places it on a different one. Scan it and the result says "Valid." And it is valid: the record is real. It just is not the record for the paper in front of you.

Screen

Student name: Somsri Jaidee
Subject: Engineering Mathematics II
Grade: A

Paper

Student name: Anan Prasert ✕ no match
Subject: Engineering Mathematics II
Grade: A

The defense is on that same screen. The verification result does not only say "Valid" — it also shows what the record certifies: whose name, which subject, what grade, what date. Those details are sealed under the signature and cannot be altered either. One task remains for you: compare what the screen says with what the paper says, field by field. Any field that does not match means this paper is not the owner of this record.

Match the screen to the paper — every field.

Three rules. That is all.

1
Scan it — changed content always fails.
2
Look at the address bar — only veriv.org counts.
3
Match the screen to the paper — every field.

Verification needs no account, no app, and costs nothing — and it always will.

See all three for yourself

The demo page lets you sign a real record, scan it with your own phone, then change one field and watch verification fail in front of you. All of it in five minutes.

Try it yourself