Can wechat chat record be used as effective evidence in court procedure?

Fact of case: In the case of A sued B for loan dispute, A requests B to pay the loan of 50000 yuan. A claims that when B borrows 50000 yuan in January, 2020 and A delivers 50000 yuan of cash to B, B issues a loan note, but a accidentally lost the loan note when moving. The process of borrowing is negotiated by both parties through wechat. A provides the screenshot of wechat chat record between A and B for this purpose. The screenshot shows that the loan process of RMB 50000 from A to B and the complete negotiation are discussed. B also expressed its gratitude to A in wechat chat, and promised to repay it within ten days.

B defense: there is no loan between the two parties. Although both parties are friends, they have not negotiated the loan through wechat, and do not admit the screenshot of wechat chat record provided by A. When the wechat were examined, the mobile phone of A was damaged and could not provide the wechat chat record of the original carrier, while the wechat chat record provided by B and a had no loan content.

Results of the decision: Legal private lending are protected by law. If the party concerned has the responsibility to provide evidence for the claim it proposes, if there is no evidence or the evidence is not enough to prove the party’s claim, the party responsible for the burden of proof shall bear adverse consequences. The screenshot of wechat chat record provided by a belongs to electronic evidence, but a can not provide the original carrier mobile phone of wechat chat record, and can not prove the authenticity of the electronic evidence. This court will not support the screenshot of wechat chat record. The court finally rejected A’s claim.

The law regulations: In the provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on evidence of civil litigation, wechat chat record, micro blog, email record and electronic payment record are all electronic evidences. And it is stipulated that if the parties take electronic data as evidence, they shall provide the original. The original carrier includes mobile phones, computers or other electronic devices which store electronic data.

Lawyer recommends: When submitting wechat chat records, it is necessary to provide demonstration of the process of logging in wechat account with terminal device, personal information interface of both parties and complete chat records. Electronic data does not mean printing out, or after a screenshot, you can rest assured that “delete records” is available. As a new form of evidence, electronic evidence is relatively tamperable compared with traditional evidence. It can often be deleted and modified by various software, so there is no way to guarantee the authenticity of evidence, so as to achieve the purpose of proof.

If you want to use wechat chat record as evidence, there are three points to be noticed in the absence of other evidence. First, we must provide the original carrier; Second, to confirm that the other party of wechat chat is the other party of the case, that is to say, the other party is the user of the micro signal; Third, the chat record on the original carrier should be complete and can not be deleted at will, otherwise the integrity will be questioned, which may lead to the evidence not being adopted. Keep the original carrier well.

Now we discuss the details of arrangement of wechat for using in court procedure.

1. How to save wechat evidence?
Although the way and procedure for collecting evidence have been clearly defined, in practice, many people are not familiar with the specific operation steps, only provide print or screenshots, which is likely not approved by the court. The procedure, content and method of collecting electronic data directly determine the authenticity, legality, proving power and relevance of evidence itself.

2. What should be paid attention to when submitting evidence related to wechat?
1) Provide the process demonstration of using terminal equipment to log in our wechat account. It is used to prove the legitimacy of holding wechat chat record and the authenticity of his / her identity.
2) Provide personal information interface of both parties. With the help of the characteristics of the non changeable micro signal, and combining the mobile phone number and the head image displayed in the personal information interface, the real identity of both parties is fixed.
3) Provide complete chat record. According to the characteristics that wechat chat records can only be deleted in the terminal, the complete chat information of wechat clients of both parties is compared to verify the integrity and authenticity of relevant information.

3. How to show wechat evidence in court?
The parties shall keep the original carrier of wechat for presentation in court, including mobile phones, computers or other electronic equipment with electronic data stored.

In court, when a judge requests to produce the original carrier of wechat and the login software to produce electronic evidence, it shall display it according to the following steps and check the consistency with the pictures, audio and video formed by the fixed electronic evidence:

1) The account holder shall log in the wechat and display the account name used for login;
2) Find the other user in the address book and click to view personal information, and display the remarks, nicknames, micro signals, mobile phone numbers and other contents with identity orientation displayed in the personal information interface;
3) Click “send message” in the personal information interface to enter the communication dialog box, and display the information content generated during the dialogue one by one. For the text file, picture, audio, video, transfer or red packet content, click to open the display.
4) When displaying transfer information, click the chat details in the communication dialog box to view the transfer record and display the transfer payment information.
5) If the electronic evidence provided belongs to the dialogue record (including text, audio and video), it shall reflect the dialogue process completely, and the contents related to the facts of the case shall not be provided selectively. The court may request that the complete record of dialogue be provided within the specified period; If the dialogue record is provided intentionally and selectively, it will bear corresponding legal consequences.

4. What should we pay attention to when we preserve wechat evidence?
1) For the pictures in wechat, it is necessary to notarize the picture and other records as a whole, and it is not recommended to preserve and notarize the pictures separately.
2) Video has the function of directly reflecting the facts. Generally, the video taken by the user is more proof. Because the video reproduced or produced is not known as the original source or has the trace of later editing, the proof power is lower than that of the video taken by himself. When handling preservation notarization, we should pay attention to the examination of the video formation mode. The record of such wechat should be recorded to extract and fix evidence.
3) we chat voice is used as recording data stored in electronic media, and it is applicable to the provisions of electronic data, but it cannot be used as the basis for separate finalization. The validity of wechat voice should meet the following conditions: keeping original records; The content must be objective, true and coherent; The contents recorded in wechat voice are clear and accurate, and both sides have clear statements on the issues discussed; Because of the characteristics of wechat speech, such as easy to change and difficult to recognize, it is not enough for it to be proved by itself. Therefore, in addition to wechat voice, other evidences should be provided to support it.
4) If the files transmitted through wechat are not saved in time, they will fail, and some network links will be invalid. In addition to the above steps, the open text file or network link content shall be preserved during the preservation. Only the downloaded text files or network links can not be verified by the authenticity and relevance alone, and may not be adopted by the court.