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Where the mark stays, and where it is lost

The mark rides on the exact characters of your text. Tools that copy text as it is keep it. Some apps strip hidden characters, and retyped or rewritten words carry no mark. No mark survives everything.

Test your own pathCheck a copy
A text mark is kept through copy and paste, wire feeds and scrapers; sometimes lost in social posts and text cleanup; and lost when the text is rewritten or printed.
The mark rides the exact characters. Tools that copy text as-is keep it; retyping or stripping invisible characters loses it.
Kept
Copy and paste, CMS publishing, wire feeds and web scrapers.
Sometimes lost
Email, chat and social tools that strip hidden characters.
Lost
Retyping, rewriting, translating, screenshots and print.
Two text marks
A default mark and a Word-safe mark. The checker reads both.

Text, tool by tool

Both the default mark and the Word-safe mark survive Unicode normalizationUnicode normalization: Text cleanup that rewrites characters into a standard form. Some forms remove invisible marks. to NFC, a common text cleanup step.

Where a hidden text mark survives
Default markWord-safe mark
Copy and paste in browsers and Google DocsKeptKept
Microsoft WordShows as boxes. Use Word-safeKept
Text copied out of a PDF with text marksProvenance markers: Encypher's general name for invisible characters that carry a signed label inside text.Kept in tested font and extractor pathsKept in tested font and extractor paths
CMS, wire feed or web scraperKept unless set to remove hidden charactersKept unless set to remove hidden characters
Cleanup to NFCKeptKept
Some email, chat and social toolsSometimes lostSometimes lost
Retyped, rewritten or translatedLostLost
Screenshot or printLostLost

Print is a separate mark

Hidden characters do not survive print. Enterprise plans can add a second mark that lives in the printed page. A good print and scan of 193 words or more can be read back.

Labels in images, audio, video and documents

A file signed with a label and a watermark loses its label when a site strips metadata; a checker finds the watermark, which points back to the signed record, shown as recovered.
If a site strips the label, a supported watermark can lead back to the signed record. The result says it was recovered.
Kept
Copying, downloading or sending the file unchanged. The C2PA manifestC2PA manifest: The signed label itself: a small package inside a file that records who signed it, what they declared and how to check it. is part of the file.
Often lost
Social and chat apps that re-encode uploads, and exports that rewrite the file.
Found again
A soft bindingSoft binding: A watermark or fingerprint that can find a content label again after the file was copied or its metadata stripped., such as a supported watermarkWatermark: A mark placed in the content itself, visible or hidden, so it can be found again after the file is copied., can lead back to the record.

What a lost mark means

Four of the five answers a provenance check can give: Verified, Modified after signing, Issuer not recognized, and No provenance found. The fifth is Could not verify.
A check reports who signed and whether the content changed. It never says whether the content is true.
The copy
It checks as unsigned. A missing mark does not say who removed it, or why.
The original
The signed record stays on file, with what was signed and when.
No forgery
Removing a mark cannot create a valid mark for someone else.

For engineers

Show the technical detail

Survival results come from Encypher's test harness, which runs signed text through common copy, publishing and cleanup paths, including Unicode normalization to NFC.

Error correction repairs a few dropped characters, for example the two or three a PDF text extractor may drop. It cannot repair a mark whose characters are all gone.

Signing options

Keep reading

Create. Mark. Endure.

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