The intensification of the digitalization of social, commercial, and professional relationships has direct effects on contemporary civil procedure. Legally relevant facts have come to materialize predominantly in electronic records, such as instant messages, emails, digital documents, social media posts, and data stored on online platforms. In this scenario, digital evidence assumes a central role in the reconstruction of facts in court, requiring the Judiciary to provide responses compatible with the technical and legal challenges inherent to it.

The Code of Civil Procedure authorizes the use of all legal and morally legitimate means to demonstrate the truth of the facts, including electronic records. However, formal admissibility does not exhaust the problems of digital evidence, whose volatile and technically manipulable nature requires caution regarding the legal security, authenticity, and reliability of the evidence presented.

The digital evidence landscape faces a crisis of reliability stemming from the ease with which electronic content can be altered, fabricated, or taken out of context. Forensic practice demonstrates the recurrence of edited screenshots, messages taken out of context, and manipulated images, making it difficult to distinguish between authentic and fraudulent evidence.

In this context, the evaluation of digital evidence has come to depend on demonstrating its origin, integrity, and reliability. Authenticity, therefore, plays a structuring role in digital evidence. For it to be considered valid, it is necessary to demonstrate that the content remained intact from its creation or collection until its inclusion in the case file. At this point, the concept of chain of custody stands out, understood as the set of procedures that documents the collection, storage, handling, and preservation of evidence.

Although codified in criminal proceedings, the chain of custody principle has been applied analogously to civil proceedings, given the similarity of the technical risks involved. Traceable documentation of the collection procedure helps to reinforce the credibility of the evidence and reduce questions about its integrity.

The jurisprudence of the Superior Court of Justice reveals a consistent trend towards tightening the criteria for admissibility of digital evidence, with direct repercussions in civil proceedings. This is because, although several precedents originate in the criminal sphere, their foundations are transversal in nature.

In HC 828.054/RN, the 5th Panel of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) declared inadmissible digital evidence obtained by simple screen capture, without adequate technical methodology, highlighting that the easily alterable nature of digital data demands greater rigor regarding the custody and preservation of evidence. This understanding directly impacts civil procedure, in which the inclusion of "screenshots" remains a recurring practice, but increasingly vulnerable to challenges.

Subsequently, in HC 1.036.370/PR, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) consolidated the essential technical attributes of digital evidence, in accordance with the ISO/IEC 27037:2013 standard, requiring auditability, repeatability, reproducibility, and justifiability of the methods used. The focus of judicial analysis thus shifts from isolated content to how the evidence was produced and preserved.

Given this scenario of greater technical rigor, it becomes necessary to identify legal instruments capable of conferring reliability, traceability, and presumption of veracity to digital evidence. It is in this context that the notarial deed is inserted, a traditional means of documenting facts endowed with public faith, whose evidentiary function gains prominence in the digital age.

A notarial deed is an instrument by which a notary, in the exercise of a delegated public function, faithfully describes facts that he witnesses or ascertains, conferring upon them a relative presumption of veracity. Article 384 of the Code of Civil Procedure expressly recognizes the notarial deed as a means of proof, authorizing the certification of data represented by image or sound in electronic files. Notarial public faith confers a relative presumption of veracity to the facts ascertained, shifting the burden of proof to whoever intends to challenge the certified content.

The digital notarial deed proves to be especially relevant by combining the legal verification of the fact with the observance of technical criteria for preserving evidence, such as metadata recording, hash code generation, and timestamping. Jurisprudence has repeatedly recognized its suitability, as in AgInt in AREsp 2.408.609/PR (2024), in which the STJ reaffirmed its probative efficacy in digital environments marked by the volatility of information.

The increasing demands of case law have driven the development of institutional solutions aimed at standardizing the collection of digital evidence, most notably e-Not Provas, a tool integrated into the e-Notariado platform, launched in January 2026. Its objective is to enable the notarial certification of volatile digital content in a controlled virtual environment, with direct involvement of the notary public.

The procedure incorporates technical mechanisms such as metadata registration, cryptographic hash generation, and timestamping, allowing verification of the content's integrity and its existence at a given time. From a legal-procedural standpoint, e-Not Provas brings the production of digital evidence closer to the parameters required by jurisprudence, especially regarding traceability and documentation of the collection procedure.

In civil proceedings, its use proves relevant in cases where digital evidence is a central element of persuasion, without disregarding the necessary observance of personal data protection legislation.

This is because the production and use of digital evidence must observe the limits imposed by personal data protection legislation, especially the General Data Protection Law. The search for evidence does not authorize the indiscriminate collection of information, particularly when it involves sensitive data or data from third parties unrelated to the legal proceedings. Thus, the actions of legal professionals must be guided by the principles of purpose, necessity, and proportionality, balancing the right to evidence with the protection of privacy.

This guideline concludes that digital evidence has become a central element of contemporary civil procedure, reflecting the increasing digitalization of legal relations. Its effectiveness, however, does not stem solely from the relevance of the content presented, but also from adherence to technical and legal criteria capable of ensuring the authenticity, integrity, and reliability of electronic evidence, in accordance with the guarantees of due process and the protection of personal data.

The tightening of jurisprudence demonstrates that the mere inclusion of digital records is not sufficient for their acceptance in court. The evaluation of electronic evidence now requires reliable methods of collection, preservation, and documentation, capable of demonstrating the regularity of its production and eliminating risks of tampering or decontextualization. In this scenario, instruments such as the notarial deed, especially in its digital form, and institutional solutions developed within the notary profession, such as e-Not Provas, prove to be compatible with the current demands of the justice system.

Thus, the proper production of digital evidence does not represent excessive formalism, but a necessary condition for legal certainty, the effectiveness of judicial protection, and the legitimacy of judicial decisions in the digital age, a scenario that explains the growing institutionalization of notarial certification mechanisms for electronic evidence in the Brazilian legal system.

REFERENCES:

STJ – HC 1.036.370/PR, Rapporteur Justice Joel Ilan Paciornik, 5th Panel, decided in September 2025.

STJ – HC 828.054/RN, Rapporteur Justice Joel Ilan Paciornik, 5th Panel, decided in April 2024.

AgInt in AREsp 2,408,609/PR, Rapporteur Justice Maria Isabel Gallotti, 4th Panel, decided in September 2024.

ABNT NBR ISO/IEC 27037:2013 – Guidelines for the identification, collection, acquisition and preservation of digital evidence.

Notarial College of Brazil – Federal Council (CNB/CF): www.notariado.org.br

e-Notary Platform: www.e-notariado.org.br