Documentation · Updated 13 November 2026
Daily proofs
You don't have to take our word for when a version was saved. Every day we publish a list of that day's version fingerprints and anchor the list with an independent timestamping service. This page lists the files and explains how to check them.
The files
Loading the list of proofs…
What is published
Shortly after midnight UTC we build a manifest for the day that has just ended: a plain text file with one line for every version saved that day. Each line holds the story's number in our archive, the version number, the version's content fingerprint, the fingerprint of the page it was read from, and the capture time.
We then take the SHA-256 hash of that file and submit it to OpenTimestamps, a free public timestamping standard. Its servers combine many submitted hashes and commit the result to the Bitcoin blockchain, usually within a few hours. The receipt is the .ots file next to each manifest.
What this proves
Once a proof is confirmed, anyone can show that the manifest existed, unaltered, by the time of that Bitcoin block, without relying on NewsFacts, our database or our servers. Because the manifest contains a version's fingerprint, that version's text existed by then too. We cannot go back and change a version, add one, or move its date without the proof failing.
It has limits, and they are worth stating. The proof fixes the latest time by which a version existed: roughly the day after it was saved. It does not independently prove the exact minute shown on a record; that time comes from our own collector. And it proves what text we recorded, not that the outlet published it. That is what the saved page is for.
How to verify a proof
- Download a manifest and its
.otsfile from the list above, into the same folder. - Drop both onto opentimestamps.org, or install the free tool and run
ots verify 2026-11-13.txt.ots. - A proof less than a few hours old reports "pending". After that it reports the Bitcoin block and its date.
To check one version, find its line in the manifest. The 12 characters shown beside each version on a record page are the start of the fingerprint on that line.
The saved page
For every version we also keep the page as our collector received it, with scripts and styling removed, in private storage. Its fingerprint is in the manifest, so the stored page can't be swapped later either. We don't publish these pages, because they are the publishers' work, but they are what we check a record against when one is disputed.
Proofs begin with 13 November 2026. Versions saved before the saved-page step was added that day show "-" in that column.