4 ms·

My recent apartment lease was delivered online, but required me to go through every page and click a button that filled in my initials in a cursive font. It’s s

by baddox 9y ago

My recent apartment lease was delivered online, but required me to go through every page and click a button that filled in my initials in a cursive font. It’s silly, yes, but I’m sure it’s just there to “prove” that I acknowledged each page individually.

user5994461 9y ago
It's the same as a paper contract.
supertrope 9y ago
That's the e-equivalent of initialing every page of a contract. The cursive part is funny. Rituals change slowly. People trust moused signatures and fax machine timestamps more than RSA public keys.
- amyjess 9y ago
  If it's DocuSign, they actually let you pick your own font from a list, so you can claim it's "your" handwriting because you chose it. And it's been a while, but I think they let you mouse a signature and initials if you don't like any of the fonts. The funny thing is that for the last few years, I've been trying to make my own handwriting resemble an italic serif font as much as possible, so I actually do write like a font. But for everything except my signature. I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Sometimes it's even an X.
  - zodiakzz 9y ago
    >I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Is that legal? o.O
    - uiri 9y ago
      Yes. If you say it is your signature, even if someone else physically signed on your behalf, then it is your signature. The hairy part is if you say it isn't your signature.
    - nolok 9y ago
      It is, but it means parent will lose any contractual dispute ever on the signature proof part. Here is how it goes in a dispute. You have A saying B signed a contract, and B saying he didn't. It's A's job to prove he did first, and he indicate there is a signature on there, and it's B's. So now it's B's turn, and he needs to show it isn't his (if he does, then A become accused a making a false, and will need to prove he didn't). To do that, B needs to prove that he usually signs a different way, so he provides other signatures everywhere to show it. Since parent signs differently everywhere, he cannot show that he has a regular signature that doesn't match the one on paper. In fact, it shows that any scribble CAN be his signature as long as there is one, and thus the court will tend to assume the one on the contract is his. So parent's strategy is terrible, and you really shouldn't be playing that game, because it doesn't catch you until it really does.
      - lmm 9y ago
        > To do that, B needs to prove that he usually signs a different way, so he provides other signatures everywhere to show it. Since parent signs differently everywhere, he cannot show that he has a regular signature that doesn't match the one on paper. How often does that work? Presumably a fraudster would copy B's signature from a receipt out of their trash or something (a priori they have no way of knowing that B signs differently every time); how likely is it that someone going to that effort would not get a signature that's a "good enough" match compared to B's normal signature, however careful B is about always signing the same way?
        nolok 9y ago
        The vast majority of cases where this relevant (99+%) are identity theft, where you got the name / ssn /address through some mail or website or whatever and uses that to contract things on someone else's name. Also, finding differences in signature is much easier and much more advanced / developed than you would think. Even if you copy mine after seeing it or having a model, the places where you slow down your pen etc... Vary compared to me, and that can be detected. Is it possible with technology to make a perfect copy? Of course, but then you just move to the next steps of the case, and you already cleared out the majority of bogus cases. So having a fixed stable signature is a very good thing for you the user, and it always surprise me when I see people who think they played the system when they screw their own protection like parent.

by baddox 9y ago

user5994461 9y ago

It's the same as a paper contract.

supertrope 9y ago

That's the e-equivalent of initialing every page of a contract. The cursive part is funny. Rituals change slowly. People trust moused signatures and fax machine timestamps more than RSA public keys.

amyjess 9y ago
If it's DocuSign, they actually let you pick your own font from a list, so you can claim it's "your" handwriting because you chose it. And it's been a while, but I think they let you mouse a signature and initials if you don't like any of the fonts. The funny thing is that for the last few years, I've been trying to make my own handwriting resemble an italic serif font as much as possible, so I actually do write like a font. But for everything except my signature. I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Sometimes it's even an X.
- zodiakzz 9y ago
  >I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Is that legal? o.O
  - uiri 9y ago
    Yes. If you say it is your signature, even if someone else physically signed on your behalf, then it is your signature. The hairy part is if you say it isn't your signature.
  - nolok 9y ago
    It is, but it means parent will lose any contractual dispute ever on the signature proof part. Here is how it goes in a dispute. You have A saying B signed a contract, and B saying he didn't. It's A's job to prove he did first, and he indicate there is a signature on there, and it's B's. So now it's B's turn, and he needs to show it isn't his (if he does, then A become accused a making a false, and will need to prove he didn't). To do that, B needs to prove that he usually signs a different way, so he provides other signatures everywhere to show it. Since parent signs differently everywhere, he cannot show that he has a regular signature that doesn't match the one on paper. In fact, it shows that any scribble CAN be his signature as long as there is one, and thus the court will tend to assume the one on the contract is his. So parent's strategy is terrible, and you really shouldn't be playing that game, because it doesn't catch you until it really does.
    - lmm 9y ago
      > To do that, B needs to prove that he usually signs a different way, so he provides other signatures everywhere to show it. Since parent signs differently everywhere, he cannot show that he has a regular signature that doesn't match the one on paper. How often does that work? Presumably a fraudster would copy B's signature from a receipt out of their trash or something (a priori they have no way of knowing that B signs differently every time); how likely is it that someone going to that effort would not get a signature that's a "good enough" match compared to B's normal signature, however careful B is about always signing the same way?
      - nolok 9y ago
        The vast majority of cases where this relevant (99+%) are identity theft, where you got the name / ssn /address through some mail or website or whatever and uses that to contract things on someone else's name. Also, finding differences in signature is much easier and much more advanced / developed than you would think. Even if you copy mine after seeing it or having a model, the places where you slow down your pen etc... Vary compared to me, and that can be detected. Is it possible with technology to make a perfect copy? Of course, but then you just move to the next steps of the case, and you already cleared out the majority of bogus cases. So having a fixed stable signature is a very good thing for you the user, and it always surprise me when I see people who think they played the system when they screw their own protection like parent.