Damage surveys: how to stop the date being challenged

Anyone doing insurance surveys knows it: an assessment is rarely challenged on technical merits. It is challenged on the surroundings — when you photographed, whether the images are the originals, what stayed outside the frame. Three doors, and all of them close on site. Never afterwards.

The typical challenge

The pattern repeats. The survey is carried out days after the loss; photos end up in a folder, then in a report. Months later, in argument, the observation arrives: how do you show those images were taken on that date, and that the damage was not worsened in the meantime?

The question is awkward because it requires the asker to prove nothing. Raising it is enough. The usual answer — file metadata, the report date — rests on elements anyone can rewrite, as covered in the guide on EXIF metadata.

You are not asked to prove you are right. You are asked to prove you could not have been wrong. Those are different burdens.

Where the vulnerability comes from

The weak point is not photo quality: it is the interval. In the traditional flow, hours or days pass between the shot and the moment that file is fixed verifiably. During that interval the files are ordinary: copyable, editable, with no reference to compare them against.

Sealing at capture removes the interval. It does not add a step to your work — it removes one, because certification is no longer a later task you have to remember.

What to put in the file

A third-party timestamp is what closes the backdating door. It is not a date you gave yourself: it is an external party attesting that the image already existed at that instant. Against the accusation of having photographed later — or of having let the damage worsen before photographing — it is the one argument that is not arguable.

Where the other side is particularly combative, or the amount justifies it, there is the option of a qualified timestamp under eIDAS Regulation (EU) 910/2014: Article 41 grants it a presumption of the accuracy of the date and time and of the integrity of the associated data. In practice the burden inverts — you do not have to prove the date is right, the challenger has to prove it is not. In LOCUS this is a per-acquisition option and consumes two extra slots.

Video, for context. Photos document details; a short walkthrough video documents the relationship between details — and closes the third door, the «what stayed outside the frame» one. In video, position is recorded continuously rather than as a single point. Note that a video consumes two slots instead of one: use it where it genuinely helps, not everywhere.

Voice notes. You can attach a voice note recorded on site to a photo: it stays inside the sealed package and is not transmitted. It is the fastest way to fix now what you would otherwise reconstruct from memory weeks later.

The calculation that actually matters

A photographic acquisition consumes one slot. Depending on the pack, the cost per slot runs roughly from about six euros down to about three — current figures are on the pricing page, which reads the same source as the checkout. Slots do not expire and there is no subscription: they are consumed when needed.

The relevant comparison is not against another app's price. It is against the cost of one single case where the survey gets challenged: the time to reconstruct, the party expert that becomes necessary, the outcome that slips or is lost. Documenting an average loss with ten sealed photos costs about as much as lunch. One challenge costs a few hundred times that, and it cannot be recovered retrospectively: the window for sealing closed on the day of the visit.

Confidentiality, which is not a detail here

A damage survey captures other people's property, sometimes home interiors, sometimes people. In the LOCUS model content never leaves the device: for photos, what goes to the server is the image histogram — a graph of the light distribution — not the photograph. For audio, the waveform. Video does not go up at all.

It means no third party, us included, sees what you captured. That is a comfortable position in front of a policyholder asking where the images of their home will end up. The flip side to plan for: you are the custodian, and if you lose the package it cannot be rebuilt. Back it up to a second location, always.

It remains the case that capturing people and private premises is subject to legal limits. Under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) in particular, lawfulness of processing is a separate question from integrity of the file: the tool documents a fact and strengthens its authenticity, but lawfulness and admissibility in the specific case are assessments that concern you and the court, not the software.

Operational summary

On site: photograph inside the app, not in the camera roll. Add the case reference so the file is labelled from the start. A short video where context matters. A voice note if there is something the images do not say. A qualified timestamp where the amount or the opponent justifies it.

The result is a package the other side can verify on its own, without asking you for anything — which is exactly what makes challenging it pointless. How they do it, in practice, is covered in how the opposing party verifies your evidence.