🚀 go-pugleaf

stanley@phoenix.com (John Stanley) writes:
> If they are good enough, how do you tell a digitized signature from a
> Xerox copy of a real one? Laser printers are, after all, fancy copy
> machines. If the signature is obviously digitized, then it is of no value,
> as the customer will see that and know you couldn't even be bothered to
> sign the original.

	And yet, faxed signatures seem to bear legal weight.  I've dealt
with lots of vendors who would not ship goods on a verbal PO, but were happy
to with a faxed one (a Purchase Order is technically a legally binding
contract which obligates us to pay for the specified goods).  A faxed
signature is obviously digitized, yet nobody seems to mind.  It wouldn't be
very hard for me to concoct a bitmap image of a fake PO with a digitized
signature of our controller using MacPaint or some such and send it off with
a fax modem in the Mac on my desk.  This scares me, as I suspect that most
people who routinely send and receive signed legal documents have no idea
how easy they are to forge.
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane?  Did you say arcane?  It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"