How verification evidence works

We collect evidence only for specific verification scenarios:

• Reviewer tenancy proof — when a renter is asked to verify a tenancy period (e.g. lease, bond receipt, utility bill at the address).
• Claimant authority proof — when a landlord, agent, building manager, or owners corp claims a profile.
• Management period proof — when a claimant establishes the date range they managed a property.
• Dispute evidence — when either party attaches material to a review dispute.
• Experience period proof — when a renter verifies a specific tenancy period.

Each scenario has its own per-role evidence list — only documents that prove the specific relationship are accepted. Government IDs, passports, and similar identity documents are not accepted; we verify relationships, not identity.

When you upload evidence we ask you to first cover or crop information we don't need:

• bank account numbers + BSBs,
• tax file numbers,
• government ID numbers,
• unrelated people's faces or names,
• unrelated tenants' details,
• children's details,
• signatures where not strictly required.

Before every upload we ask you to confirm a five-checkbox attestation:

• ☐ I have covered account numbers and bank details.
• ☐ I have covered unrelated people and tenants.
• ☐ I have uploaded only the relevant pages.
• ☐ I understand claimants will not see this document.
• ☐ I understand Rental Reputation may destroy or de-identify this evidence after verification.

Verification evidence is only accessed by Rental Reputation's trust team to perform verification, dispute handling, or fraud-prevention work. Every admin who opens an evidence file is required to select a reason from a fixed list before the file opens, and every open is recorded in an append-only audit log.

Claimants never see reviewer documents, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, or private evidence. Reviewers never see claimant evidence. Public pages show only an outcome label — for example, "Verified former renter" or "Period verified privately" — never the underlying documents.

Evidence files are stored in a private encrypted vault — a separate secure storage location from any public photo or asset on the platform. The vault has no public access. Only short-lived signed URLs (5 minutes) generated by our trust team can read a file.

We do not store evidence on third-party verification platforms during the verification flow. Where we use third-party tooling (e.g. media moderation), only public, non-evidence content is shared with that vendor.

We keep verification evidence only for as long as needed for verification, dispute handling, fraud prevention, legal compliance, or safety. When we no longer need raw evidence we delete, redact, or de-identify it and keep only the verification result and audit record.

Default retention windows:

• Accepted verifications — 90 days from the decision.
• Rejected verifications — 30 days from the decision.
• Legal hold — preserved as long as the hold applies. The hold record itself is permanent for audit-defensibility.

Once raw evidence is destroyed, only the verification outcome, a short audit record, and (where relevant) a hash of the original file remain.

When verification completes successfully, a label may appear publicly on a review or profile. We use a fixed catalogue of labels — never document-type labels like "Lease verified" or "ID verified." Examples:

• "Verified current renter"
• "Verified former renter"
• "Tenancy period verified privately"
• "Property link verified privately"
• "Property-management authority verified"
• "Registered OC manager verified"

If re-identification is plausible (for example, a single named human + unit + period combination would identify the reviewer), we drop precision automatically and use a "verified privately" label rather than a dated one. You can always opt your verification down to the private label even when the dated label is technically safe.

We review legal requests carefully and do not disclose reviewer information merely because a claimant disagrees with a review. We may disclose information only where required by law or where we have a lawful basis to do so.

You can revoke a verification at any time — the underlying evidence is destroyed at the next retention pass. If you've uploaded evidence that you'd like deleted sooner, contact our trust team and we'll prioritise destruction subject to any ongoing dispute or legal hold.

Removing evidence may downgrade your verification label (e.g. from "Verified former renter" back to "Self-reported renter"), but it does not affect the review itself.