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As some have pointed out, some countries put more legal weight on a fax. That's just not a thing in Estonia, where everything is digitally signed with your ID c

As some have pointed out, some countries put more legal weight on a fax. That's just not a thing in Estonia, where everything is digitally signed with your ID card, so you either email or upload official documents.

toomanybeersies 8y ago
In New Zealand, you can send practically any legal documents via email. I don't think you even need to have them signed, being sent from your email address counts as signing them. It makes sense really, forging a signature is actually trivial for most legal documents. Nobody ever looks very hard. It would be harder to access my email account and send an email than it would be to forge my signature.
- etatoby 8y ago
  It's a common misconception that sending something "from your email address" requires any degree of accessing your email account. It does not. The visible "From" is transmitted as a regular header and you are free to modify it at will, much like the Subject line. Some low-level clients make this easier (say, Mutt) but most clients allow you to do so. For instance, all desktop and mobile apps, such as Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail have an Accounts setting screen where you can change your "sender" email address. You can write anything you want in that field. Online services, such as GMail, require you to have access to the addresses you wish to use as "sender", but they are the exception. Anybody can still use your GMail address as sender in their emails. (Anti-SPAM features such as SPF notwithstanding.)
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I'm aware of email spoofing, but there are measures to protect against this, like SPF as you mentioned, as well as DKIM.
    - exikyut 8y ago
      Indeed, but putting sociopolitical (read: secretary-implemented) weight on something so easily confused (View Original Message > manually decipher headers, vs "From:") sounds... uninformed and underfunded, at the very least, to me.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

In New Zealand, you can send practically any legal documents via email. I don't think you even need to have them signed, being sent from your email address counts as signing them. It makes sense really, forging a signature is actually trivial for most legal documents. Nobody ever looks very hard. It would be harder to access my email account and send an email than it would be to forge my signature.

etatoby 8y ago
It's a common misconception that sending something "from your email address" requires any degree of accessing your email account. It does not. The visible "From" is transmitted as a regular header and you are free to modify it at will, much like the Subject line. Some low-level clients make this easier (say, Mutt) but most clients allow you to do so. For instance, all desktop and mobile apps, such as Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail have an Accounts setting screen where you can change your "sender" email address. You can write anything you want in that field. Online services, such as GMail, require you to have access to the addresses you wish to use as "sender", but they are the exception. Anybody can still use your GMail address as sender in their emails. (Anti-SPAM features such as SPF notwithstanding.)
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I'm aware of email spoofing, but there are measures to protect against this, like SPF as you mentioned, as well as DKIM.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Indeed, but putting sociopolitical (read: secretary-implemented) weight on something so easily confused (View Original Message > manually decipher headers, vs "From:") sounds... uninformed and underfunded, at the very least, to me.