Check a certificate's PDF file

1. Open Verify, or the certificate's own verification page.
2. Drop the PDF onto the page, or press Choose PDF.

Your browser works out the file's fingerprint (its SHA-256) and compares it with the fingerprint recorded when the certificate was issued. The file itself is never uploaded; only the fingerprint is sent.

What the answers mean

• This file is the original: it is, byte for byte, the PDF that was issued. Verify opens the certificate's record, where you still need to read the result, because an unchanged file can belong to a certificate that was later withdrawn or replaced.
• No certificate was issued as this exact file: the file is not an original. A genuine certificate gives this answer once it has been scanned, photographed, printed to PDF, re-saved or edited, and so does a forgery. Check the serial printed on it instead.
• This file belongs to a different certificate: it's an original, but of another serial than the one you were looking at.

The file check is exact, so it can prove a file is the original but can't prove a different file is a fake. When a file doesn't match, the serial and the record decide: compare the name, course and date on the record with the copy you were given.