How a PrivHaven report is verified

The report is evidence, not certification. It attests a deterministic process and its findings — facts an auditor can independently reproduce, without trusting us and without the data ever leaving a device.

The breathalyzer model

A breathalyzer is type-approved and calibrated; each reading is admissible evidence; the manufacturer never certifies the driver. PrivHaven is the calibrated instrument. Your DPO, auditor, or counsel draws the compliance conclusion — we never do.

What makes it reproducible

• Pinned engine + ruleset. The report records the engine version it ran under, the SHA-256 of the engine binary that actually ran, and a ruleset hash that is computed from the detection rules themselves — so the verifier recomputes it and compares, rather than taking the report's word for it. A report produced under different rules will not verify against this one.
• Pure, deterministic core. Same input bytes × same version ⇒ byte-identical findings — no floats, no hash-map order, no ambient inputs.
• Tamper-evident. The report's reportHash is a SHA-256 over its canonical form: change one byte of it, and the hash no longer matches.

How to verify a report

1. Recompute the hash. SHA-256 over the canonical report.json must equal its reportHash.
2. Reproduce the findings. Re-run PrivHaven at the recorded engine and ruleset version over the same input file — the findings must be byte-identical.
3. Read the limits. The report's remediation notes and the detection rules state what detection does not guarantee (e.g. names in free text without an NER pass).

Reproduction doesn't need this website. A dependency-light headless runner (privhaven-verify) re-runs the engine over your file and reports whether it reproduces — scan reports byte-identically, scrub reports at the findings level.

Why this is the difference

Local scrubbers mask data. Only a reproducible report lets a third party confirm what was checked and handled — turning "we cleaned it" into evidence that stands up in a review. That's the line between a tool and an instrument.

Produce a report — free to preview