ExactMark

Newsrooms & publishers Pre-publication

Embargoes hold better when every draft copy has a source.

Draft investigations, legal-review PDFs, source documents and preview pages pass between editors, lawyers, fact-checkers and syndication partners before a story runs. ExactMark gives each recipient their own marked copy and each CMS preview session a covert signal. When a page is photographed or forwarded and appears early, Evidence Lab returns the most likely source, or an honest inconclusive result.

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  • Per-recipient draftsOne upload of a legal-review PDF or source document becomes a distinct copy for each editor, lawyer and partner.
  • Preview pages signedOne script tag on the CMS preview gives every signed-in session a covert, session-specific signal.
  • Attribution or inconclusiveEvidence Lab returns a most likely source with a confidence score and ranked candidates, or says it cannot.

A source document photographed on a phone and sent to one person is out of your hands. The question that matters afterwards is not whether it happened, but which copy it was.

The story broke before the story ran.

An investigation in its final week is read by more people than at any other point: the desk editor, the lawyer reviewing every claim, the fact-checker, the picture desk, the syndication partner preparing translations. Every one of them holds an identical PDF or a link to the same preview page. If a draft appears on social media or reaches the subject of the story, there is no way to say where it came from, and the fallout lands on the whole newsroom.

Attribution, not a locked door.

ExactMark does not stop anyone forwarding a PDF or photographing a screen. It makes each copy and each preview session distinct, with a low-opacity, redundant tiled spatial signal that survives crops, resizing, recompression and phone photos. When a page surfaces, Evidence Lab correlates it against your candidate copies and sessions and reports the most likely source with ranked candidates, or an inconclusive result. The answer is documented in a branded PDF evidence report you can put in front of the editor or the lawyer.

How it works

How it works

From the legal-review PDF to a documented answer in three steps.

  1. 1

    Imprint the draft

    Upload the legal-review PDF, source document or page proof to ExactMark Imprint. Name each editor, lawyer, fact-checker and syndication partner, or import a CSV of up to 100 recipients. Download each copy individually or as a ZIP. PDFs keep their original content and text.

  2. 2

    Protect the preview

    Add one script tag to your CMS preview or reading-room pages and call exactmark.identify(...) for the signed-in journalist or partner. ExactMark renders a covert, session-specific signal over the page. The SDK never captures or records the page itself.

  3. 3

    Submit the leaked page

    Upload the screenshot, photo or PDF to Evidence Lab, or forward it to your Web App's private evidence email address. The detector searches across crop, scale, rotation, colour and compression and returns an attribution with ranked candidates, or an inconclusive result.

Capabilities

What a newsroom gets in the workspace.

ExactMark Imprint

Recipient-linked copies of PNG, JPG, WEBP and PDF files. Bulk up to 100 recipients via CSV, download individually or as a ZIP. Each copy carries the spatial signal, signed non-identifying metadata and an opaque filename reference.

Web Sessions

A single script tag protects CMS previews and reading rooms. Covert by default; visible and combined modes are available when you want the deterrent seen.

Evidence Lab and email intake

Upload leaked files or forward them to a private evidence address. Cases keep workflow state, notes, the original asset and a downloadable branded PDF evidence report.

Privacy and EU hosting

Viewer identifiers can be pseudonymised, with the mapping held by you. Hosted in Dublin with Supabase in Ireland; forensic data encrypted with application-level AES-256-GCM.

FAQ

Questions editors and legal teams ask.

Does ExactMark stop a draft from being photographed or forwarded?
No. It is an attribution and deterrence product, not DRM or screenshot prevention. It tells you which copy or session a leaked page most likely came from, and it is honest when it cannot tell.
Will the mark be visible on a legal-review PDF?
Not by default. The signal is a low-opacity, redundant tiled pattern that is not designed to be noticed, and the PDF keeps its original content and text. A visible mode exists if you want the reminder on the page.
Can we keep journalists' and sources' identities out of ExactMark?
Yes. Viewer and recipient identifiers can be pseudonymised and the mapping can stay inside the newsroom. ExactMark only ever receives the evidence files you choose to submit.
What if the result is inconclusive?
Evidence Lab says so rather than guessing. The case, notes and original asset are kept, and Recovery+ is available as an optional human-led investigation for evidence that matters enough.
Does the script tag record what our journalists read?
No. The SDK renders the signal over the protected page and never captures or records the page. Optional Lighthouse network intelligence never stores the raw IP address.

Publish on your terms.

Self-serve sign-up, USD plans through Stripe Checkout and a one-time testing plan for your next embargoed piece.

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