Adding and Verifying Your Seal(s)

At VerifyThisSeal.com, the trust and integrity of every professional seal are paramount. Before a users can create seal codes, they must first that their are the seal owner. This guide explains the step-by-step process our system uses to verify your ownership of a professional seal.

The Core Concept: The Authoritative Record

Our verification process is built around a central principle: comparing the user who is making a claim against the Authoritative Record in our database.

What is an Authoritative Record?
We populate our database with official data provided by trusted sources and licensing authorities. These pre-existing record—containing the license number, the professional's full name, and in many cases, an official contact email—serves as the source of truth for verification.

Every claim you make is checked against this secure dataset. The outcome of your claim depends on how the information from your user account matches the information in the Authoritative Record.

The Seal Claim Process: A Step-by-Step Explanation

Step 1: Initiating the Claim

You begin by selecting your State/Jurisdiction, Profession, and entering your Seal/License Number in the My Seals page. When you click "Add Seal for Review," our system takes this information and immediately starts cross verifications against our Authoritative Records.

Step 2: System Verification Flows

Based on what the system finds, one of the following automated flows is triggered:

✅ Flow A: The Auto-Approval Path

• Condition: An Authoritative Record for your license exists, it's currently unclaimed, and the verified name on your account matches the name on the record. Auto-approval is triggered if EITHER of these two high-confidence factors is also true:

  1. The Authoritative Record has no email address on file.
  2. The email address on the Authoritative Record is an exact match to your verified VerifyThisSeal.com account email.

• Why it Works: An exact name match is our primary check. If the official email on file also perfectly matches your verified account email, we have two strong identity factors, making an additional confirmation step unnecessary. Similarly, if no official email exists to verify against, the exact name match is sufficient to grant the claim.

• Outcome:

  1. The professional seal is immediately moved to an approved status.
  2. It is securely linked to your user account.
  3. You receive an email notification confirming that your seal has been approved and is ready to use.

📧 Flow B: Two Factor Email Verification Path

• Condition: An Authoritative Record for your license exists, the name on your user account matches the name on the record, but the email address on the record is different from your verified account email.

• Why it Works: This flow is a critical security step when a user is trying to claim a seal associated with an email address that isn't their primary account email (e.g., a work address vs. a personal one). To prevent unauthorized claims, we must verify that the user has control over the specific inbox officially associated with the license.

• Outcome:

  1. A secure, single-use confirmation link is sent to the email address from the Authoritative Record (i.e., the one provided by the state).
  2. This link is valid for only 24 hours for your security.
  3. You must click the link in the email to finalize the process. Upon clicking, the seal becomes approved and is linked to your account.

📝 Flow C: New Seals & Manual Review Path

• Condition: The system finds no existing Authoritative Record for the combination of your State, Profession, and License Number.

• Why it Works: This can happen if you are newly licensed or if our database has not yet been updated with the most recent data from your state's licensing board. In this case, your claim initiates the creation of a new record that requires verification by our staff.

• Outcome:

  1. A new seal record is created in our system using the information you provided.
  2. The seal is automatically assigned a pending status.
  3. Our internal staff is immediately notified of your new submission and will begin a manual review.
  4. You will see the seal in your "Your Seals" list with the "Pending" status tag and will be notified by email as soon as the review is complete (est. > 24 hours).

🛑 Flow D: Name Mismatch Security Halt

• Condition: An Authoritative Record for your license exists, but the name on your user account does not exactly match the name associated with that license in our records.

• Why it Works: A name mismatch is a security flag. To protect the integrity of the professional's seal, the system automatically halts the process.

• Outcome:

  1. The claim is blocked. No change is made to the seal record.
  2. You will receive an immediate on-screen notification stating: "For security, your account name must match the name on record for this professional seal. Please contact support for assistance."
  3. This allows our support team to manually assist with legitimate cases, such as legal name changes.

🔒 Flow E: The "Already Claimed" Security Halt

• Condition: An Authoritative Record for your license exists, and it is already approved and linked to another user account.

• Outcome:

  1. The claim is blocked.
  2. You receive an on-screen notification stating: "This seal has already been claimed and is active on another account. If you believe this is an error, please contact support."