If you’ve ever taken out a loan, you’ve probably been asked for copies of documents that show your income and savings, like a recent paystub, a W-2 form, or a bank statement. And if you’ve ever had to file an insurance claim after an accident or fire, you may have been asked to submit receipts or invoices verifying the expenses you’re asking to have reimbursed.

The trouble for insurers and lenders is that it’s not necessarily easy to know if those forms people submit are genuine. There’s always a risk of unscrupulous customers using Photoshop or other editing tools to artificially boost their salaries or the costs of their replacement items.

A Bay Area startup called Inscribe, which recently participated in the Y Combinator accelerator program, is using digital forensics and machine learning techniques to help companies figure out when documents are forged and altered. The company is currently working with tech-savvy lenders to test its technology now, and as of September, those early clients should be able to upload documents on their own to have the system highlight areas of potential fraud concern.

“A user uploads a document, and we reveal all the information they need to make a decision,” says CEO and cofounder Ronan Burke.

Techniques include looking for places where parts of an image appear to be duplicated, such as if a number were copied from one place to another on a form, and looking for inconsistencies in coloring and fonts that could indicate tampering. More technical aspects of images, like levels of JPEG compression across a file or metadata that indicates certain tools were used to edit the files, can also be used.

Future versions of the product will also be able to spot inconsistencies between documents, like if the amount listed on a pay stub doesn’t make sense in conjunction with a W-2 or offer letter, Burke says. They might also be able to sync up with various databases to verify whether figures or other data on documents are accurate.

“If somebody forges their bank statement, they also need that to correlate with their tax form and their employer offer letter,” he says.