Checksum — Legalnaut glossary  A Markdown version of this page is available at https://legalnaut.com/glossary/checksum.md for AI and LLM tools. 

  Checksum
========

 A checksum is a short fingerprint computed from a file, which changes if even one byte of the file changes.

sha256 is the one most commonly used for evidence. Two files with the same sha256 are the same file; two files with different sha256 values are not, however similar they look.

In practice it does two jobs. It proves a document has not been altered since it entered the file, and it stops the same document being imported twice under two different names.

 Related: [Provenance](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/provenance), [Chain of custody](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/chain-of-custody), [Deduplication](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/deduplication)

 Legalnaut builds this out of your own case file. [See the plans](https://legalnaut.com/pricing).

 SCREENSHOT

    ![]()