Frequently Asked Questions

Adobe says your signature is “unknown”? Don’t worry: Adobe isn’t the one who decides

You received a document signed through Legale.io, opened it in Adobe Reader, and a yellow bar appeared with an unsettling message: “At least one signature has problems” or “The validity of the signature is UNKNOWN.”

This is one of the most common questions we get. The short answer is this: the document is fine, the signature is legally valid in Chile, and what’s missing is a setting in your Adobe Reader that takes two minutes to fix.

Below we explain why it happens, why it means nothing legally, and how to fix it for good.

1. Adobe is not a legal authority in Chile

This is the first thing to understand, and it completely changes how you read that message.

Adobe is a U.S. software company. It is not a Chilean government body, it does not regulate electronic signatures, and it has no power whatsoever to declare whether a document is valid in Chile.

What Adobe Reader actually does is something different: it maintains its own list of certification authorities that its software trusts by default. It’s called the AATL (Adobe Approved Trust List), and it mostly covers certification authorities from the United States and the European Union. Chilean certification authorities are not distributed through that channel — they are published by the Chilean State itself.

So when Adobe displays “validity unknown,” it is not saying the signature is fake. It is saying, quite literally: “I don’t recognize this certification authority because it isn’t on my list.”

A simple analogy: if you travel abroad and a local doesn’t recognize your Chilean ID card because they’ve never seen one, your ID card doesn’t stop being valid. That person simply has no frame of reference. Chile’s Civil Registry is still the one that decides, not the stranger.

Notice one more detail in Adobe’s own message: right next to the warning, the software confirms that “the document has not been modified since this signature was applied.” In other words, Adobe verifies the integrity of the file and confirms it. The only thing it can’t do is recognize the certification authority.

2. So who does accredit electronic signatures in Chile?

In Chile, the authority is the Entidad Acreditadora (Accrediting Authority), which operates within the Undersecretariat of Economy and Smaller Enterprises, part of the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism.

The legal framework is:

• Law No. 19,799 (2002), on electronic documents, electronic signatures, and certification services for such signatures.
• Supreme Decree No. 181 (2002), which implements it.

This law establishes the principle of functional equivalence: an electronically signed document carries the same weight as one signed on paper. And for the Advanced Electronic Signature (FEA), it goes further: a private instrument signed with an FEA constitutes full proof in court, just like a document signed before a notary.

There is only one condition: the certificate must have been issued by a Certification Service Provider (PSC) accredited by the Entidad Acreditadora. Not by Adobe. By the Chilean State.

3. E-Sign, the certification authority behind Legale.io, is accredited

Legale.io is a signing platform. The Advanced Electronic Signature certificates we use are issued by E-Sign S.A., a provider that has been accredited by the State for two decades.

Here is the official data — all of it public and verifiable by anyone:

Item	Value
Legal name	E-SIGN S.A.
Tax ID (RUT)	99.551.740-K
Accreditation as FEA certification provider	Resolution R.A.E. No. 330, dated June 1, 2005
Time-stamping accreditation	R.A.E. No. 1367, dated May 6, 2016
Biometrics accreditation	R.A.E. No. 3557, dated November 9, 2016
Mobile signature accreditation	R.A.E. No. 3926, dated December 7, 2016
Public registry	entidadacreditadora.gob.cl/entidades

E-Sign is one of a small group of accredited providers currently operating in the country. Accreditation is not a formality: it requires technical audits, certified security infrastructure, qualified personnel, a permanent service for querying issued certificates, and mandatory civil liability insurance.

On top of that, each signer’s identity is verified through audited biometric processes, which are themselves accredited by the same authority.

4. So is there a conflict here? No

There is no contradiction between the two, because they answer entirely different questions:

	What is it?	What does it say about your document?
Entidad Acreditadora (Chile)	A Chilean government body	The certificate is valid and the signature has legal effect
Adobe Reader	Commercial software from a private company	“This certification authority isn’t on my list”

One answers a legal question. The other answers a software configuration question. They can never contradict each other, because they were never answering the same thing.

Put another way: the legal validity of your document does not depend on how your PDF reader is configured. If you uninstall Adobe tomorrow, the document is still signed and still valid.

How to verify it yourself

You don’t have to take our word for it. You can check in three minutes:

1. Go to www.entidadacreditadora.gob.cl (the official Ministry of Economy site).
2. Navigate to Entidades Acreditadas → Entidades (Accredited Entities → Entities).
3. Find E-SIGN S.A. in the list and compare the RUT and resolution number against the table above.

That same page also includes a section listing entities whose accreditation has been cancelled, which lets you confirm that E-Sign’s accreditation is current.

5. Step by step: how to make Adobe show the signature as trusted

You only need to do this once per computer. After that, every document signed with an E-Sign certificate will show the green check.

Step 1: Download the root certificate from the government site

Go to www.entidadacreditadora.gob.cl/certificados-raiz, find the E-Sign section, and download the most recent archive. Unzip it into a folder you’ll be able to find later.

Important: always download it from the Ministry of Economy website. Inside Adobe there’s a button labeled “Add to Trusted Certificates” in the certificate window. Don’t use it. That button trusts the certificate bundled inside the PDF you’re trying to verify, which is not an independent source. Downloading from the government site is safer and takes no longer.

Step 2: Open the signature preferences in Adobe Reader

1. Open Adobe Acrobat Reader.
2. Go to the main menu and open Preferences.
3. In the list on the left, select the Signatures category.
4. Under Identities & Trusted Certificates, click More…

Step 3: Import the certificate

1. In the window that opens, select Trusted Certificates in the left-hand panel.
2. Click Import.
3. Browse to and select the file you downloaded in Step 1 (it will have a .cer or .crt extension).
4. Confirm the import.

Step 4: Define what you’re trusting

With the certificate imported and selected, click Edit Trust and check only these two boxes:

• Use this certificate as a trusted root
• Signed documents or data

And leave these three unchecked:

• Dynamic content
• Embedded high privilege JavaScript
• Privileged system operations

Those last three are not needed to validate a signature, and enabling them only adds unnecessary risk. Confirm with OK.

Step 5: Turn on revocation checking

Still under Preferences → Signatures, go to the Verification section and click More…. There:

• Check “Require certificate revocation checking to succeed whenever possible during signature verification.”
• Under verification time, select “Time at which the signature was created” instead of the current time.

That second setting matters more than it looks: without it, a perfectly legitimate signature will start showing up as invalid as soon as the signer’s certificate reaches its expiration date, even though it was valid at the moment of signing.

Step 6: Close and reopen the document

Close the PDF and open it again. The yellow bar should turn green, with the message “Signed and all signatures are valid.”

Done. That computer is now configured permanently.

In summary

• Adobe is private software, not a Chilean authority. Its “validity unknown” message is a configuration issue, not a legal one.
• Adobe itself confirms that the document was not altered after it was signed.
• The certificates used in Legale.io are issued by E-Sign S.A., a provider accredited by the Undersecretariat of Economy since 2005 — public and verifiable.
• The legal validity of your document is governed by Law No. 19,799 and does not depend on which program you use to open it.
• Configuring Adobe takes two minutes and only needs to be done once.

If the document still shows warnings after following these steps, get in touch and we’ll look into it with you.

At Legale.io, we understand that modern organizations need more than just a contract management system — they need a digital governance platform capable of ensuring efficiency, compliance, and traceability across every process.

That’s why Legale.io has evolved the concept of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) into a new generation of intelligent, connected, and compliance-driven ecosystems.

A new standard in digital governance

Legale.io goes beyond traditional contract storage. Our CLM enables organizations to govern the entire lifecycle of their contracts — from creation and negotiation to signature, renewal, and compliance monitoring — within a single, unified platform.

We combine document automation, advanced e-signatures, notarial services, and artificial intelligence to simplify complex workflows and accelerate legal and administrative processes securely and transparently.

Connected to your corporate ecosystem

Our CLM integrates seamlessly with the world’s leading systems, including SAP, Salesforce, ADP Payroll, and Microsoft Dynamics, among others.

Through our flexible API, Legale.io easily connects with your company’s native infrastructure, ensuring interoperability without disrupting your existing tools or processes.

AI-driven intelligence and risk management

Powered by artificial intelligence, Legale.io identifies, classifies, and compares contractual clauses in real time — detecting risks, ensuring compliance with internal policies, and recommending optimal language based on your organization’s standards.

Our analytics engine transforms your contract data into actionable insights, enabling smarter decisions and continuous improvement.

Compliance and traceability at the core

Legale.io is designed to meet the highest international security and compliance standards, including ISO 27001, GDPR, and local data protection frameworks.

Every document, signature, and process is traceable, auditable, and fully aligned with corporate governance requirements and ESG principles (Environmental, Social, and Governance principles).

The future of contract governance

With Legale.io, organizations achieve end-to-end digital transformation in their legal, administrative, and operational processes — reducing costs, increasing transparency, and reinforcing trust.

We are not just managing contracts. We are redefining how the world governs them.

To back up documents from Legale.io to an external repository, you can follow two main approaches:

Integration based on custom scripts: This method is suitable for any external repository, such as S3, Google Drive, etc. The steps include listing all documents, retrieving detailed information about each document, confirming the signature status, downloading the signed document, and uploading it to the external repository[1].

No-code integration using Power Automate and SharePoint: This method involves creating a flow in Power Automate, configuring an HTTP request to Legale.io, confirming the signature status, downloading and uploading to SharePoint, and recording metadata.  

Go to the Users section.

Select the user you want to delete by checking the box next to their name.

Click the “Delete” button in the top action bar.

A confirmation dialog will appear asking you to re-enter the user’s email address to validate the deletion. After entering the email, click the red “Delete” button.

Before permanently deleting the user, the system will ask if you want to transfer the user’s documents to another account. You can choose “Yes” to reassign the documents or “No” to leave the documents under the system administrator’s account.

Once the deletion process is complete, a confirmation message will appear indicating that the user was successfully deleted. 

To delete an existing contact in Legale.io, follow these steps:

Select the contact you want to delete by checking the box next to the contact’s name. This will activate the action buttons at the top.

Click the “Delete” button located at the top of the screen.

A confirmation message will appear asking if you are sure you want to delete the contact. To proceed, click the red “Delete” button.

Once the contact has been successfully deleted, a confirmation message will appear on the screen stating “Contact successfully deleted.” This confirms that the operation was completed and that the contact has been removed from your list. 

To add a new contact in Legale.io, go to the Contacts section from the sidebar and click the “New contact” button. This will open a form where you can enter the contact’s details, such as email, first name, last name, identification number, phone number, and optional fields like address or additional email. Once all required fields are completed, click the green “Submit” button to save the contact in your directory.  

In Legale.io, a “contact” refers to a person who is registered in the contact list and can be selected to sign documents or participate in workflows. Contacts may include information such as name, email, phone number, and they can be Legale users or simply viewers.

On the other hand, a “user” is someone who has access to the Legale.io platform with a set of assigned permissions and roles. Users can be administrators, have permissions to manage documents, create workflows, and more. Users are part of the organization and have a more complete profile within the system. 

To add a new user in Legale.io, go to the Users section in the sidebar and click the “New user” button. This will open a registration form where you can enter the user’s details, such as their name, email address, and phone number. Once all fields are completed and the necessary permissions are configured, finish the user creation process by clicking the green “Create” button. 

To recover expired signatures, when a document shows the status “SIGN LINK EXPIRED,” you can generate a new expiration date by selecting the file and clicking the “Renew expiration date” button in the top action bar. This restores the ability for the signer to access and complete the signing process. 

To view the signatures you have available, you must access the user menu by clicking on the profile icon in the upper right corner and selecting “Contracted Products”.  

Test

GUID can be retrieved from a document—whether it has been signed, is still in progress, or has been rejected. Just click the “Verification” option.

The signing flow will remain incomplete until all required parties have signed or the document expires. You can send reminders or cancel the flow. 

If the signature process terminates, the quota is returned to your account. 

Yes. You can configure by priority or simultaneously when setting up the signer list. 

Yes. Legale is fully responsive and accessible from browsers on mobile phones and tablets. 

Go to the Legale platform (app.legale.io) and log in with your email and password.

Contacts with incomplete information (missing full name or ID) appear greyed out and cannot be selected until fully completed. 

Yes. The Smart Document builder allows setting up conditional logic.

They can be created from Legale platform, Word online and uploading a DOCX document.

Legale supports PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, JPG, PNG, CSV, PPT and ZIP for processing, signing, or attaching to workflows. 

Yes. Admin users have the ability to reset passwords for any team member through the user management panel.

Yes. When a link expires, administrators or owners can extend the signing period without restarting the workflow. 

Yes. In the Profile section under “Contracted products” -> “Purchase History,” you can review all contracted services.

Yes. You can open the help center and create a support ticket .

Yes, you can update steps, participants, or documents by clicking “Edit” from the workflow options and saving the new configuration. 

Yes. Select “Attached Link”, paste the URL, and it will be added to the document as a clickable reference. 

Yes. Use the “Attached File” option and upload from your device.

Yes. Navigate to the subfolder and use the download option for its contents. 

If no specific file is selected, clicking the download button downloads all available files in the folder. 

You can connect via SFTP, API key, and Callback URLs. 

Navigate to signature settings, choose your default method (drawing, typing, uploading), and save. 

From the language options, select your preferred language and confirm the update. 

Yes. In the header, choose between light and dark mode. 

Yes, signed documents also offer verification tools to check final integrity and ownership. 

Select the document and click “Verification”. The system will display its status and metadata including signature chain. 

Yes. Upload or draw a signature in the certificate settings to reflect it on final signed documents. 

Go to the Compliance section, select the parameters and click “Create report”.

Choose “Terminate” in the options. This ends the workflow immediately and notifies participants. 

Yes. Click “Pause” from the workflow options. You can resume it later. 

The original owner no longer sees the workflow or file in their My Drive. Ownership is fully transferred. 

Yes. Use the “Reassign” option, choose the new owner, and confirm. The document will move to their My Drive. 

We accept all the popular payment methods such as PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amazon Pay, American Express and Google Pay.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to make any changes to an order or cancel it once it has been placed. However, you could ask for a refund.

Yes, free shipping is available for all the orders that’s placed inside the United States. We charge shipping fees for overseas orders.

To track the status of your refund, kindly refer to your confirmation email that you have received from us.

Yes, we ship all over the world. Please note that additional shipping costs will be applied based on your delivery location.

We usually take 3-5 business days for your order to be shipped & delivered.