Add the Sealway address in BCC of an email: Sealway receives the message as it is sent, with its attachments and the recipients shown, and builds dated, verifiable evidence of it. This email evidence establishes what was transmitted, and when; it does not establish that each recipient received or read it, and it does not replace registered mail.
You send a quote to a client on Tuesday at 9:15 am. Three weeks later, they say the amount they received was not that one.
The problem is no longer finding a file in your mailbox, but being able to produce the message and the attachment tied to that sending, in a way that does not rest on your word alone. A screenshot or a printout of an email takes minutes to make; so does a file exported from a mail client. In a dispute, what you produce yourself, after the fact, carries little weight.
Sealway email evidence rests on something else: a copy of the message received by Sealway as it leaves, through the ordinary email circuit, then timestamped by a qualified third party. What the message contained, with which attachments, to which recipients shown and when it was transmitted to Sealway no longer depends on a reconstruction.
We say “email evidence”, not “certified email” or “registered email”: those terms refer to other guarantees, in particular about receipt, which Sealway does not provide.
You keep using your mail client: Sealway does not replace it and does not install into it. It receives a copy of the message and computes its fingerprint, as it does for a file.
Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, a corporate mailbox or any other client: write the message and attach the files as you always do, from your usual mail client and address. Nothing changes for you or for your recipients.
In the BCC field, add your Sealway address, or that of the collection the proof should be filed in. The To and Cc recipients receive the email as usual; they do not see the Sealway address.
The copy reaches Sealway’s mail server through the ordinary email circuit. The message is kept as received, headers included, and each attachment is separated from it to receive its own fingerprint.
Sealway computes the SHA-512 fingerprint of the raw message and of each attachment, binds them to a qualified electronic timestamp and produces the evidence file: certificate, timestamp token, fingerprints, message and attachments. A message received twice yields a single proof.
For each email, the certificate states its source, “received by email”, the sender, the To and Cc recipients, the subject, the date declared in the message and the name of each attachment with its fingerprint.
The same email as usual, one more address in the BCC field.
Two addresses exist, and both work in BCC.
Every account has one unique inbound address: that of your personal account, or that of your organization if you work in a business account. You find it in your account settings, under “Incoming email address”, and in the proof creation flow by choosing “Email”. An email received at this address becomes a proof in that account.
Every collection has its own too, shown on its page under “Collection email address”. An email sent with that address in BCC is filed in the collection automatically: “Supplier ABC project” has its address, and the project’s exchanges file themselves.
Sealway ties the proof to your account through the sending address: it must be the one you signed up with, as shown on your profile. A message sent from another address or an alias is not turned into a proof.
A readable name followed by a short identifier, for example [email protected]. Copy it from the app rather than retyping it: the identifier is part of the address.
A .eml file is the representation of an electronic message. It can be exported from a mail client, but also built or edited before being submitted to Sealway.
Does not show that the email was actually transmitted beforehand.
Shows that Sealway was one of the recipients of that sending and received its copy, with this content, these attachments and these To and Cc fields. What the other recipients received, Sealway does not observe.
If you imported a .eml as a plain file, Sealway could establish that this exact file existed at the time of the proof. It could not infer that the message left the mailbox, that it was transmitted at the time stated in the file, that the recipients shown received it, or that the file was not built before the import. Timestamping a .eml does not turn its declared content into a verified fact. That is why the web app refuses .eml and .msg files: email evidence is created by sending, not by uploading.
This is the most important nuance on this page.
When you send an email with Sealway in BCC, your mail client delivers the message to each recipient separately: to the servers of the To and Cc recipients, and to Sealway’s server. Sealway sees only its own delivery. It does not see whether the other servers accepted the message, whether it reached an inbox, whether it was filed as spam, opened or read.
In BCC, Sealway is one of the recipients of the sending: the copy it receives carries the content, the attachments and the To and Cc fields of the message as your mail client sent it. Its receipt therefore establishes that the sending did take place, no later than the time of the timestamp, and what the message addressed to those recipients contained. In the normal operation of a mail system, the same copy is delivered to each of them; Sealway does not observe that and does not prove it. That is a much stronger element than a file imported after the fact, because it does not depend on you. But it is not evidence of delivery of the message to the other recipients: what happened on their side, Sealway does not see.
What an email proves in a dispute is for the court, which weighs the material freely. Email evidence gives it a content, attachments and a date that do not depend on the person producing them.
It is often what matters: a report, a deliverable, a list of batches, a quote. Sealway keeps it together with the message that carried it.
Sealway extracts each attachment from the message received and computes its SHA-512 fingerprint. The certificate lists the attachments by name, each with its fingerprint: final-report-v7.pdf has its own, distinct from that of the message.
The proof gathers the message, as received, and the files it carried. Producing the attachment alone, months later, makes it possible to verify that it is the one received with that message, on that date.
You write “please find the final version of the report attached”, with final-report-v7.pdf. A few months later: “that is not the version I received”. The email evidence shows the message, the recipient as stated in it, the attachment actually transmitted to Sealway, its date and its integrity.
Under French law, yes, an email can be produced in court. What it is worth depends on what it has to prove and on what comes with it.
Cour de cassation · social chamber · 25 September 2013
Appeal dismissed · published in the Bulletin · decision under appeal: cour d’appel de Bordeaux, 1 September 2011
A dismissed employee produces an email whose authenticity the employer disputes. The employer blames the court of appeal for not checking whether the email met the conditions of electronic writing (identification of the author, integrity, signature). The Cour de cassation dismisses the appeal.
The provisions relied on are not applicable to an email produced to prove a fact, the existence of which may be established by any means of evidence, which the trial judges assess in their sovereign discretion.
What Sealway takes from it
An email produced to prove a fact is admissible and freely weighed by the court. Its strength depends on what makes it possible to establish its content, date and transmission: exactly what email evidence documents, without prejudging the court’s assessment.
A property-purchase withdrawal case shows what becomes of an email of which only a copy is produced.
Cour d’appel de Paris · pôle 4, chambre 1 · 15 June 2018
Upheld save for the amount of the penalty clause · decision under appeal: tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 16 September 2016
A buyer claims to have withdrawn from a property purchase within the statutory period by an email sent to the seller’s agent. The agent denies receiving it. The court recalls that the withdrawal may be exercised by any means offering guarantees equivalent to registered mail for establishing the date of receipt, then looks at what is produced.
Mrs Y..., who produces only a photocopy devoid of evidential weight as to the actual sending of a withdrawal email to the Quai Ouest agency, proves neither its sending nor its receipt.
What Sealway takes from it
A copy displayed from a “Sent” folder is not independent evidence that a message was transmitted. A copy received by Sealway as the email is sent, then timestamped, is such evidence for the transmission to Sealway and for the content. It still does not prove receipt by the agent: when receipt matters, the sending method has to guarantee it.
The eIDAS Regulation tells apart the qualified electronic timestamp, which Sealway uses, from qualified electronic registered delivery, which it does not provide.
| Qualified electronic timestamp (Sealway) | Qualified electronic registered delivery service | |
|---|---|---|
| Provisions | eIDAS Regulation, art. 41 and 42 | eIDAS Regulation, art. 43 and 44 |
| What is presumed | The accuracy of the date and time indicated, and the integrity of the data to which they are bound | The integrity of the data, its sending by the identified sender, its receipt by the identified addressee, and the accuracy of the date and time of sending and receipt |
| Identification of the addressee | None: Sealway only knows the address written in the message | Required before the data is delivered |
| What it establishes about receipt | Nothing | A presumption of receipt by the identified addressee |
| What it is for | Documenting the content, the attachments, the recipients shown and the transmission of a message | Serving notice when a law, a contract or the stakes require proof of receipt |
Sealway is not a qualified electronic registered delivery service and must not be presented as one. When receipt has to be proven, or a rule requires registered mail, use the sending method that guarantees it; email evidence can complement it, not replace it.
Once the message is received, email evidence follows the path of every Sealway proof: SHA-512 fingerprint of the raw message and of each attachment, Merkle tree, qualified electronic timestamp enjoying a presumption of accuracy of the date and time and of integrity of the data (eIDAS Regulation, art. 41(2)), anchoring on public blockchains, evidence file verifiable without Sealway.
Two dates appear in email evidence. The date declared in the message is the one your mail client wrote; it is part of the timestamped content but is not certified in itself. The date of the qualified timestamp is when the message, as received, was fixed: it establishes that it existed at the latest at that instant.
Two situations where email evidence answers a precise question: what was transmitted, with which attachments, and when?
Contaminated batch, withdrawal, recall: keep evidence of the alert email sent to the distributor, with its attachments and its date.
Learn more →Prove what was sent to the client, with which attachment and when, by adding Sealway in BCC of the handover email.
Learn more →What people ask about email evidence.
Texts, decisions and standards cited on this page; the French sources are in French.
Sealway does not provide legal advice. The weight of an email in a dispute depends on what it has to prove, on the applicable law and on the court’s assessment; where a rule requires a form of sending, that form prevails. The French decisions cited illustrate French law.
The message, its attachments and the recipients shown, received as it is sent and timestamped by a qualified third party. Join the waitlist to be notified at launch.
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