the one benefit i see is as a final “lock in your answer” function for any form you’re submitting.
And did they have to stop allowing written signatures because of AI scraping? Or is it just because they never looked legible at all?
I scanned the responses, and didn’t see anyone who mentioned this.
The point at which the U.S. allowed you to “sign” your name by typing was when the E-Sign Act was passed. That was in 2000, long before LLMs were really a concern.
The reason was to make online commerce easier. Verbal contacts could and continue to be enforced, but enforcement requires more effort than with a written contact.
At the time I thought the law was passed by people who didn’t understand technology and how easy this made it for people to commit fraud or screw over consumers. However now I realize they just didn’t give a fuck.
The actual shape of your signature hasn’t really meant much for some time. As recently as 2005, Visa’s contract had the most bizarre requirements.
You are supposed to sign the back of your card. If you paid with the card, you had to sign the receipt. The cashier was supposed to examine the signature on the card and the signature on the receipt and decide if they matched.
But. If the card was not signed, the cashier was supposed to insist that the person present sign the card, and then the cashier was supposed to compare the signatures right there. We were also forbidden by contract from asking for ID.
It was like this further back than 2005. I worked retail in the mid 90s and it was the same. And if the signatures didn’t match, well. Oh well. We had no power to do anything about it. The number of self-righteous idiots I had who thought that they were clever when they would sign their cards as Mikey mouse and then freak the hell out when I never bothered to check because it didn’t matter if it was signed Mickey Mouse or Ronald Reagan and you signed the receipt with your actual name. We couldn’t do anything! God they’d get so mad. Thank god we had great management that would back us.
Had my identity stolen. Thief bought a car with a loan they got online. Forged my signature at the dealer half a country away. I hired a lawyer because BofA are fucking criminals.
Me: “This is clearly not my signature on this document. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
Lawyer: “Nope. Not a thing.”
WTF.
Now anything asking for my signature is squiggles unrelated to the written language.
Obligatory “bofa deez nuts”
What else happened?
Went to court. Judge ruled in my favor. In the meantime I had contacted the Consumer Protection Bureau (US). Back when they had teeth and funding. BofA must have had a whole department that dealt with CPB because that shit got resolved quick. Took more than two months and around $1500 to get it cleaned up.
My credit is locked at all three agencies now. Highly recommend everyone do it. The fact it isn’t locked by default is asenine.
Proper digital signatures are very secure and prove that you have possession of the signing key and that the document has not been modified since. Unfortunately those keys are very expensive (unless your employer gets them for you), so usually when people sign something in Acrobat or whatever it will just use a self-signed certificate at best. This does still prove that the document hasn’t been modified since it was signed, but it doesn’t prove anything about who signed it.
The visual signature part of a “digital signature” is purely cosmetic. The actual signature is the entire file being cryptographically signed using a private key you possess, which any recipient can then verify came from you by using a public key.
This is the case for all government issue signatures (like when using the private key inside a chipped government id card) or any other signature created using a key pair from an issuing authority.
If its not a digital signature in this way, the other way is literally just an image. It can be a vector or an raster, or a straight up scan of a physically signed document. It’s just a picture. It has no digital verification whatsoever.
In the US, they don’t do the cryptographic signatures, they do the image. There are document signing services where you just type your name and it creates a “handwritten” signature from that name and that’s legally binding apparently.
I found it very funny when I had to sign a contract with an American company that way. Not sure it would’ve been legally binding in my jurisdiction, but the contracts was more or less “don’t tell anyone about exact details of the sizable bonus you’re about to receive, or we’ll revoke it, also you’ll have to stick around for half a year to receive the other half”, when the company got sold to private equity and the original owners decided to give us all something to remember them by.
Usually, these services also cryptographically sign the document in a way that establishes that the user who agreed to sign the document was authenticated to the service under the indicated identity using whatever means of authentication.
Old school contract law was always about expressed mutual understanding, and predates widespread ability to read and write so didn’t require papers (but did like having witnesses of the agreement).
You still see surviving requirements of some contract signings needing witnesses.
It’s still the same in the digital age, if you can demonstrate all participants agreed then the form doesn’t matter much (aside from in regulated fields, some have their own requirements on form).
Surely they’re talking about the likes of DocuSign, which doesn’t involve any user-controlled keys
The only private key with docusign is the fact you has access to the email inbox. And it’s not even a private key, just a symmetric key in the link of the email. They might do some basic user agent and IP checks for suspicious activity, but if someone you know has access to your email DocuSign wouldn’t know the difference
the other way is literally just an image (of your signature)
I’ve done that a few times, in GIMP (or Photoshop), and was always a little surprised that it seemed to be enough. Maybe I unwittingly “forged” my own signature? That’s legally murky…
How is it legally murky? Someone asks if that’s your signature on the document and do you remember signing it, and it is and you do, so you say yes. End of discussion.
It’s only a problem if you’re claiming it’s not your signature. But then, they have to prove it’s your signature, you don’t have to prove it’s not. I’m not sure you can prove it’s not your signature, hence burden of proof being on the other party.
It’s really just a digital way to do the equivalent of printing the document, signing it, and scanning it again. Which is also accepted in a lot of situations.
Ive signed many contracts like that, never had an issue
🤯
Well that explains everything. Thank you very much!
That didn’t quite explain everything. I want to add that there are “type your name to sign” forms that are just what you described, just bytes spelling out your name. In those cases, you’re right, those bytes don’t have your handwriting to prove anything, but they do accomplish something. If the form is secured behind a login and not a totally buggy heap of garbage, then the act of typing your name on that form demonstrates that whoever logged in deliberately expressed their approval. And whatever level of identity verification is needed for login is then playing the part of demonstrating who did that. That’s not perfect, but the level of evidence might match the level of risk enough to justify that mechanism to the company providing it, and it’s important to consider all factors: not just system cost, but end user tolerance.
E.g., there was (maybe still is?) a “ham” radio logging system that had end users generate their own PGP signing key pair to sign their log books, which are simply a list of who they talked to over the radio, always for non-commercial purposes (by law). Many questioned whether a secure web site with good 2FA might suffice and be much more convenient, manageable, and adequate risk level for most users.
“Digital signature” is a proper term that should mean what the parent comment explained–public key crypto “signing” (a hash of) a document’s content–but “sign here by typing your name” will inevitably get called a signature and, obviously, is also digital, just not a real “digital signature”.
Thank you, I was definitely thinking of the first paragraph but the context of third paragraph (and MentalEdge’s comment) helps me to understand why that system actually works/is considered good enough.
I was at a grocery store back when you had to sign the little digital screen for a card transaction and I finished signing, but the cashier got distracted and didn’t accept the signature for a while, so I just doodled Godzilla trashing a skyscraper next to my name.
My best friend was there with me and from that day forward, I’m not sure if he’s ever signed something without adding a Batman logo.
Signatures are arbitrary.
That would be precisely an example of how signatures are not arbitrary, but rather marked in our own unique quirks.
“This guy drew a batman symbol on his signature!” “Oh yeah, EvilBit’s friend always does that. That means you’ve got the real deal”
Except that you can draw whatever you want and it can be different each time in theory. Some may enforce consistency, but there’s no legal requirement of it.
physical signatures are just asking you to write your name in a box…
Not a huge difference.
No I disagree, the idea with physical signatures is that you write it in cursive, so in theory nobody will do ot exactly the same way as you write it - but then people can forge things, and since people don’t actually write their name the exact same way every time, forgery is essentially as good as perfect.
Edit to fix typo and add italics.
Nobody has relied only on signatures to verify that a person signed it, since forever. Especially because forgery was always a thing.
This is why documents that are important aren’t just signed by one person; they’re signed by witnesses who presumably will vouch for it. (Like notary public’s are a thing.)
For lesser contracts they first verify you are in fact you.
There’s no functional difference online- to within a reasonable standard.
Yeah, no.
I wanted to withdraw some money from my investment portfolio in bank, and the teller denied my request multiple times because of mismatching signature. Then they told me to change my stored signature, which took additional 10 minutes.
Like how in the fuck does any of that make sense. It needs to be same, but I can change it regardless, so what was achieved.
I never use handwriting, my signature isn’t even 60% same between any 2 attempts.
So how did they know you were you?
They allowed you to update the signature. They may have been oddly fixated on the signatures matching, but they still verified your identity in some other way.
Or they’re idiots who shouldn’t be in control of other people’s money,
This is not universal. Many don’t proactively check, the signature is typically used afterwards when the account owner makes a claim that some action was fraudulent. Some businesses will check to avoid precisely dealing with those claims, but most don’t have to.
And also, legally the mark can be anything and it’s just a convention that it is your name.
You might disagree, but that doesn’t mean you’re right. A signature does not require cursive. It doesn’t even have to be legible. It’s a mark that you make signifying that you agree to whatever it is you’re signing.
https://thelegalguide.org/understanding-signatures-legal-definitions-validity/
Fair - the idea with a signature is that you ideally write it in cursive, unless you have a seal or stamp to hand? Depending on what the document asks, and most will ask a written signature.
Could be a jurisdiction thing. Non-cursive signatures* get rejected in my country if the recipient bothers to check.
( * If written in the Latin alphabet.)
And, most young adults don’t sign in cursive anymore, so, aside from terrible handwriting, their printed name isn’t really much different than a typed name.
most young adults don’t sign in cursive anymore
That seems like a terrible idea. I’m disappointed in humans yet again.
Meh. After hearing years of complaints from old people about how terrible young people are, and working with a lot of young people who are objectively much better people than the old ones that complain about them, I always try to stop to think about why traditions are valuable.
Does writing your words with extra loopy bits that are less legible than print REALLY make you a better person?
Not learning cursive is like not learning Latin. Maybe it was useful at some point, but the only reason to push for it now, is because “That’s how I did it, so it must be the best way, and everyone else is wrong!”
On the flip side, there’s validity in doing things just for the aesthetics of it and we sacrifice too much to the ever present drive for efficiency.
Cursive isn’t necessarily the banner we should all rally behind for that though handwriting something is still shown as one of the best ways to remember something.
As a fan of fountain pens and handwritten letters it is nice to get one knowing someone put that effort into it.
I dunno where I’m going with any of this. Teachers and schools are underfunded, if kids are fucked it’s our fault don’t blame them, fancy squiggles are fun.
I think there’s validity in learning/teaching cursive, if you’re proficient it’s a much faster way of writing. Handwritten notetaking has been shown to be more effective than digital in terms of concept retention (you’re not just regurgitating content verbatim), and cursive can facilitate better notetaking. I’d argue its setting students up for better outcomes in secondary and post-secondary institutions.
Regardless of that I do agree with your view, we should not just continue things for the sake of tradition, young people aren’t “terrible” for forsaking certain traditions. If anything, re-evaluating what we hold as important is a useful exercise, especially when it comes to education.
Reading through these comments and I’m just now realizing something; I’ve never gone searching to see data on if cursive actually is faster on average and if so, how much. And does that handwriting improves memory fact apply more to cursive or print writing or equally just because it uses more muscles in general?
I’d imagine it would partially depend on the script chosen, ligature vs looped, Spencerian vs New American vs D’nealian etc for speed but the memory thing I’ve got no guess.
Wouldn’t shorthand (stenography) be a better solution then?
Cursive was very specifically a solution to quill/fountain pens of old, where you needed to reduce the times the pen touched the paper.
not learning cursive is like not learning Latin
I think both are still useful today, cursive less so. But sure, they’re not indicative of superior moral fibre, which is presumably why you prefer young people to old people.
To put a finer point on it, it’s not even just “moral fibre”. Sure, higher societal morality is something we should all strive for, but I’m not even asking for that much.
It’s the morally neutral bullshit like handwriting, or reading a novel on your phone instead of on paper, or spending your free time playing video games or watching YouTube/Twitch as opposed to watching Network television. There’s no reason to raise a fuss or dub others inferior for doing things a little different.
I’m not raising a fuss, but signing in detachéd does make it way easier for others to forge your signature and even makes it less difficult to replicate your own signature. Knowing how to write cursive costs nothing, so not practicing it - at least for signatures - seems terrible.
It lets you sign off greeting cards (more effectively)
It leads to faster note taking (though generally less neat notes, lol)
Sure, some people who practice their signature and do it consistently can have theirs tested for consistency but forgery is a thing. I have never had a consistent signature in five decades which confirms the whole ‘unique signature’ thing is bullshit.
The whole point is just having something that holds up for the legal system, and a lot of bullshit does.
I have never had a consistent signature in five decades which confirms the whole ‘unique signature’ thing is bullshit.
Valid.
Having a robotic copy+paste signature probably only starts being useful if you’re known to have huge amounts of cash in the bank or you’re an artist, or have a troublesome bart simpson-esque kid.
How’s your cuneiform? Do you know how to use a quill pen? Do you know how to bleach a peace of expensive parchment so that it can be reused?
How’s your cuneiform
Yeaaaaah wtf are you talking about lad. That is an alphabet, i.e of a foreign language, not the act of being able to write my own name in cursive in my native Latin script.
Do you know how to use a quill pen?
Yes. Why do you not know how to?
Do you know how to bleach a peace of expensive parchment so that it can be reused?
I could probably figure out how to bleach a piece of parchment in order to re-use it, but have never had to.
Have a nice day.
Why? Everyone’s handwriting is different and unique whether it’s cursive or regular script.
Difference is more pronounced in cursive, I strongly believe. I look at a lot of regular script handwriting and it looks the same as another person’s, you’d have to get out a magnifying glass or microscope to see the subtleties.
Now that I say that though I think a lot of handwriting manages to look the same when people strive for the same ideal of neatness.
Signatures have never required cursive. Historically, people who couldn’t read or write would just put an X in the signature spot and that was valid. Yeah, there is a marginal benefit to physically signing something in cursive, but the purpose of signing it has always been more of a final agreement step.
If handwriting and spelling and how I signed it actually mattered at all legally, then I could sign a different name when I buy a car, get keys, drive away, and later in court, say “well I never agreed to pay for this car, look at my signature, it says Frank Sinatra”. Same goes for a true forgery. The evidence I didn’t sign it myself is my statement in court saying “I didn’t sign this”, and whatever signs there are that I didn’t benefit from this.
Where I come from the X thing wouldn’t be legally binding. What people who couldn’t read or write would do is using their fingerprints. They would put their finger on a stamp ink pad and then stamp the paper with their finger. That’s why we say “someone who uses their fingerprint” as a euphemism for “illiterate”.
That’s really interesting and a great way to do that, honestly. A singular fingerprint also makes more sense than needing handwriting analysis to detect a forgery, too. Kinda feel that should be the norm everywhere, honestly, a signing and a print next to it to verify against if the need arises.
P.S. Sorry for the rant you can ignore this post. I’m just frustrated with the bureaucracy here.
I mean sure but these bureaucratic laws and practices are ancient. I come from Egypt and the bureaucracy here is terrible. To do anything government related you have you to free an entire day and some times almost a week from your schedule just to finish the paperwork and visit the required government offices. Why is that still necessary in the digital age.
When our government decided to digitise they didn’t upgrade their system they just added additional digital steps. So now the process has even more redundant steps. The issue is that the rules are too old and the system is too centralised and also fragmented. To get a single paper/request approved you usually have to go through multiple departments, offices and ministries each with their own rules, requirements and paperwork, while we have the infrastructure to just do it with a single paper, an ID and a biometric scanner and share the info between departments digitally. Also a system this complex has to have many loopholes and bound for corruption.
The argument I keep hearing for bureaucracy is that the government has to keep providing government jobs to reduce unemployment since a significant portion work in the public sector, but these jobs are useless anyway we can give some of them actually useful tasks and with the saved money we can put it to better the welfare system. Another argument is that you have pay multiple fees, but then you can also take these fees as a single summed transaction and save the time.
So your last paragraph is a bit off. One it was generally checked with your id that the names were the same. I often had to sign a non typical signature because of a place that required the full name. then also signing someone elses name on a document would be something they can go after you for. Im not sure which all laws but you can’t pretend to be someone you are not with contracts and agreements and such.
I was still speaking historically, so I meant before easy checks like your ID were in place. Its definitely harder to do that, nowadays. But of course they can go after you for it, that’s my point. You’ve agreed to a contract by the act of signing anything. If I forge a name of a nonexistent person, they can still go after me as if I’d signed it normally, because the act of signing at all is what binds me, not what I actually sign. I held the pen, I agreed to the contract. It would be ridiculous to escape legal consequences by doing things like signing differently, and in this area of law, at least in the US, common sense prevailed and I’ll be liable for whatever I willingly signed, whether that’s my name, an X, a fingerprint, a fake name, or anything else.
In parts of the world, paperwork is managed with stamps and a mark. Your doctor in latin america will stamp a blank prescription pad with a stamp that has their name and license number. They will then make a recognizable mark over the stamp. Same with your lawyer and all government offices. The point isn’t that someone can use handwriting analysis - which is just fluff - and rather that they possess the stamp and those who would read the paperwork recognize their particular mark.
“in cursive”
Laughs in years of deviating but programmed hand movements from which letters are rarely decipherable…
Which can, in all fairness, be a benefit of it. Because you might want to write something that people can’t immediately read - notes to yourself, notes in class, a passed note to someone else.
I’m not going to claim I’m happy about having “cursive for handwriting” drilled into me and being forced to learn it, but I do think it’s helpful to know for signatures or when it’s fancy writing time. There’s not really a benefit to not knowing about particular thing/skill… almost ever. It’s like the most low effort skill, and all muscle memory.___
The point of the signature isn’t the mark, but that the affirmation on the document can reasonably be tied to you. For most of history, it has been tied to a certain mark, whether it be a signed name, a stamp or embossed seal, or even a drawing. That system generally breaks down in the digital age.
A low hanging fruit that is seen to work is having the mark of approval get tied to an account under the control of the signee. It isn’t so much that you made the mark but that it is tied to an email address you control. So even if you don’t sign it with an actual signature, it still gets tied to you.
It almost feels like I’m just trolling everyone by pushing back now, but:
The point of the signature isn’t the mark, but that the affirmation on the document can reasonably be tied to you. For most of history, it has been tied to a certain mark, whether it be a signed name, a stamp or embossed seal, or even a drawing. That system generally breaks down in the digital age.
In the context of only-physical documents, is that affirmation not helped by having certain marks and/or styles of signing that are typical of your own signing? Thus the specific mark contributes to the affirmation.
For a physical only document, the mark is something relatively difficult for others to perform. Even then, signatures by themselves usually only carry a certain amount of weight by themselves; either the risk of borne by the other party or additional measures are taken like requiring witnesses including notaries.
To answer the next question you’ll probably ask, it is considered to be far more trivial for someone to apply someone else’s mark digitally than it is in person. Anyone with a pdf editor can apply someone else’s signature to a document without their knowledge.
Signature matching/analysis isn’t particularly scientific, so in general a physical signature is used for clear authorization, not identification. When you log in to something to sign your identity is already set by other means, so all the signature needs to do is say “yes, I agree to this”. E signatures in the US were legally formalized awhile ago, so it’s not really a controversy.
Your signature can be whatever you want to sign. I sign different things all the time. The legality is just in you consenting and making your mark.
Your signature looks different every time you sign it, and it being an exact replica was a way to spot a forgery. A signature has never been some sort of security feature.
The digital signature is things you don’t see. The visual signature is more for ceremony as it’s referring to our past to smooth the transition
You might be confusing this with a browser fingerprint. There isn’t a magic ghost signature that appears in the data when you consent to sign by typing your name in to a box. It’s really just the box.
I think a digital signature is also a way they can prosecute for impersonating someone for identity theft. By you typing and saying “this is me” if it’s not, they can use that as evidence.
Neat
Digital signatures are much more than “just typing your name in a box”. The few times I digitally signed a doc I didn’t even have to do that, just click on a big green button.
It’s all connected to how you authenticated before you got to that point.
I think @[email protected] explained it well.
