Proof of address is among the most forged documents, because it is requested everywhere and verified almost nowhere. In most cases it is a genuine bill belonging to somebody else, with the name and address swapped.
Unlike a fraudulent invoice, a forged proof of address rarely starts from scratch. The forger takes a real bill — their own, or one found online — and replaces only the fields they care about: name and address.
That very localised edit is what makes it detectable: the rest of the document is genuine, so every inconsistency concentrates on the edited area.
Large utilities and telecom operators generate bills through industrial pipelines with very stable technical fingerprints: same PDF producer, same embedded fonts, same internal structure month after month.
A document claiming to come from a major supplier whose producer is an office suite, an online converter or a screenshot tool contradicts what it claims to be.
When the name is replaced with an image rather than text, the paste leaves measurable traces.
A document scanned and flattened into an image has no text layer, no fonts and no revision history left. Nearly every check described here becomes inapplicable.
This matters methodologically: the absence of anomalies means nothing when there was nothing to examine. TrustyFile therefore reports such documents as unverifiable rather than giving them a good score by default. Many tools do the opposite, which is misleading.
Asking for the digital original instead of a scan or a photo turns an impossible verification into a possible one. It is the single best move when you are in a position to insist.
Edited amounts, altered dates, swapped bank details: the technical evidence that gives away a tampered invoice PDF, and how to check for it.
A PDF keeps a record of its successive saves: incremental revisions, ghost objects, two sets of metadata. Where to look to find out whether a file was edited.
The 2D-Doc barcode on tax notices, pay slips and official certificates: what it contains, what it actually proves, and why it is different from every other check.
Fake pay slips in rental files and loan applications: payroll software fingerprints, arithmetic checks and the French 2D-Doc barcode that expose an edited document.
Payment redirection fraud swaps the bank details on a genuine invoice. IBAN checksum, bank-code consistency and PDF tampering traces: how to check details received by email.
A supplier announces new bank details? How the fraud works, the warning signs in the message and in the attached document, and the checks to run before you pay.
Check a Kbis against the public registers (SIREN, directors, registered office, company status), spot a forged PDF, and know what a genuine Kbis does not prove.
Landlord or agency: verify a tenant's French income-tax notice with the tax office's online service (SVAIR), the signed 2D-Doc code and the other documents in the file.
Checking a French subcontractor's attestation de vigilance: the 15-character security code on urssaf.fr, the six-month validity, and what the law requires of the client.
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