Certified email and notification by data message: what does the law require?

Two different services share that name.

The first is a postal service, governed by Ley 1369 de 2009: a postal operator carries the item and issues a record of its delivery. It has an electronic version.

The second is a different service with a different basis: Ley 527 de 1999. Its art. 30, numeral 5 (as amended by Decreto-ley 19 de 2012, art. 161), authorises accredited entities to provide registration and time-marking services for the generation, transmission and receipt of data messages.

When does the CGP call for certified mail?

Not every company provides it: it is offered by the accredited entidades de certificación digital whose accreditation scope includes it. The postal version is provided by a postal operator.

Information is not denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely because it is in the form of a data message («No se negarán efectos jurídicos, validez o fuerza obligatoria a todo tipo de información por la sola razón de que esté en forma de mensaje de datos», Ley 527 de 1999, art. 5), and data messages are admissible as evidence (Ley 527 de 1999, arts. 10 and 11).

To notify, art. 8 of Ley 2213 de 2022 allows the personal notification to be made by sending the court order as a data message to the electronic address of the person to be notified. The Corte Suprema de Justicia has held that the legislature imposed no fixed means of proving receipt (STC16733-2022) and that a judge may not demand a proof of delivery or an acuse de recibo on pain of desistimiento tácito (STC8435-2023).

The validity of each notification is for the judge of the case to decide.

Is notification by email valid?STC16733-2022STC8435-2023

It is contracted with whoever provides it: a postal operator or an accredited entity.

The art. 8 notification of Ley 2213 de 2022 is made by sending the court order as a data message. With Notificado, you create your account, verify your tarjeta profesional against the Registro Nacional de Abogados and send the notification with its constancia.

How it works

Not for the art. 8 route. What the norm provides and what the Corte Suprema de Justicia has held are further up, in the section on the legal force of an email that is not certified.

Is certified mail mandatory?Key rulings

Notificado is a delivery-confirmation system of the kind art. 8 (inc. 4) of Ley 2213 de 2022 provides for: it sends the notification and keeps the proof of its delivery. Every send leaves:

• A verified sending lawyer: their cédula and tarjeta profesional, looked up in the Registro Nacional de Abogados before their first send.
• The message frozen in its original format (.eml), with its SHA-256 fingerprint, before it leaves.
• Two RFC 3161 timestamps, from FreeTSA and DigiCert.
• Delivery to the recipient's mail server, with the mail provider's response kept unprocessed. For the Corte Suprema de Justicia, the acceptance recorded by the server is a valid acuse (STC16733-2022).
• Opens and downloads, shown as an indicio and never as proof of reading.
• The constancia as a PDF with an electronic signature (PAdES), made with VENOMTECH S.A.S.'s own key, whose fingerprint is published.
• An evidence bundle (.zip) with a verifier that works offline.
• The bundle kept for at least ten years, in write-once storage.

Anyone can check a constancia on the verification page without creating an account.

Evidence methodVerify a constancia

Every send leaves proof that a third party can verify without Notificado.