This walks through how a claims team could use photo checks. It's an illustration, not a customer story.
The situation
A claims team receives photos with almost every home and motor claim. Most are honest. A few are not: damage exaggerated in an editor, an older photo from a previous incident, or a picture of someone else's car. Checking every photo by eye doesn't scale, and the edits that matter are usually the ones you can't see.
How a check fits in
- Ask for originals as standard. The claim form asks for photos as files straight from the phone, not screenshots or photos of photos. This one step decides how much evidence there is to check.
- Screen each photo. Upload it to snapWONDERS, or send it through the API from the claims system (free account and API key). The report shows the device, the date and place where they were recorded, the software that last saved it, and any signs of editing, each with a confidence.
- Compare the file with the claim. The strongest signals are contradictions:
- a photo dated before the reported incident
- a location that doesn't match the insured address or the accident site
- a "taken on my phone" photo last saved by desktop editing software
- different devices across photos said to be taken together
- Route, don't decide. A flagged photo goes to an assessor for a closer look. A finding is a reason to ask questions, not a verdict on the claim.
A worked example: a scratch made longer
We photographed a real scratch along the trim of a car door, then made a "claim copy" with the damage copied along the trim, roughly three times as long, the way someone might inflate a claim. (We removed the location from both files first.)
The original grades Authenticity A. Its compression settings match the phone's camera, the phone's own records sit after the image, and it carries the moment it was taken, ready to compare with the date on the claim:
The claim copy grades Authenticity B. Its compression settings belong to editing software, and the phone's records are gone:
That's enough to route it to an assessor: a photo described as "straight from my phone" that was saved again by software. What the report doesn't do is outline the copied damage itself. Its check for repeated areas found the same number of matches in both files, because door panels and trim are full of repeating texture. Asking for more photos of the same damage, from other angles, is what exposes a pasted scratch.
See it as a before and after: a scratch copied along a car door
What it can't do
- It can't tell you a claim is fraudulent. It can show that a photo's own record doesn't match the story, which is where an assessor should look.
- Photos that have been forwarded or screenshotted carry little to check. A clean result on one of those means "nothing to see", not "genuine".
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