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:

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:

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.