Brazilian civil procedure is unusually welcoming to digital evidence. Article 369 of the Código de Processo Civil (2015) states the principle broadly: parties may use all legally and morally legitimate means to prove the truth of the facts on which their claim or defense rests — including means not specifically named in the code.

That is the door. Screenshots, web captures, chat exports, technical reports: none of them needs a special statute to be offered as evidence in a Brazilian proceeding. But walking through the door is the easy part.

Admissible is not the same as believed

Article 369 answers "can this enter the case file?" It says nothing about the question that decides cases: "should the judge believe it?" Under the free-evaluation framework, the judge weighs each piece of evidence by its reliability — and digital records offered without technical support have a well-known credibility problem.

The pattern in practice is consistent: an unsupported print is met with a simple counter — impugnação — asserting that the image could have been fabricated or manipulated. The party who offered it must then sustain its authenticity, often via expert examination, from a file that carries no metadata worth examining. Meanwhile the original page has changed or vanished. The evidence was admitted, and it still lost.

What strengthens the record

Brazilian practice has converged on the elements that let a digital record carry weight:

Documented collection. A record of how, when, and from where the content was captured — turning the artifact from an unexplained image into a described procedure.

Cryptographic integrity. Hashes computed at capture, so any later alteration is demonstrable rather than debatable.

Independent time references. Anchors issued by parties outside the dispute, establishing that the record existed in that form at that time.

A verifiable custody trail. An auditable account of the record's life between capture and presentation — the element most often missing, and the one experts look for first.

Reviewability by the other side. The decisive property: the opposing party's expert can check everything independently, which drains the fabrication objection of its force.

None of this is legally mandatory. All of it goes to weight — and weight is where digital disputes are actually decided.

The practical rule

The Brazilian framework can be summarized in one asymmetry: the law is generous at the entrance and demanding at the evaluation. Anyone can put a digital record before a judge; the question is what happens when the other side attacks it.

Which yields a simple planning rule: preserve as if the challenge were certain. If it never comes, the robust record costs you nothing. If it comes, it is the difference between evidence and an image with a story attached.

This article is general information about the Brazilian procedural framework, not legal advice for any specific case.