4 ms·

Something similar happened to me recently. I was in Portugal for a year and a guy from the agency gave me fake electricity and water bills (he modified the bill

by igergg 1y ago

Something similar happened to me recently. I was in Portugal for a year and a guy from the agency gave me fake electricity and water bills (he modified the bill PDFs). I found it out by using the pdf metadata too, but didn't go any further tha n that. We were able to make him pay back our money, but we didn't sue him. I also found out that metadata can be overwritten. What is the best possible way to save yourself from these kinds of problems I wonder?

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Lawyers have had the answer to this for a couple of hundred years. Have multiple copies of everything, at the time of signing. I usually get two copies of a contract. I sign them both, the other party signs them both, and we each get a copy. Same with any amendments or codicils. We are each responsible for maintaining our own copy. There should be a way to do this digitally.
- Verdex 1y ago
  Honestly, the paper solution is the solution. If they could do it digitally then you pull in your expert to testify that it was changed and they pull in their expert to testify that it wasn't or if it was then it was done by some mysterious hacker and they shouldn't be held liable for the attempt. Meanwhile with paper, the judge and jury can look at your copy and see that it was obviously printed out and the aged for 10 years where their copy is fresh off the presses and your signature on it is either not a match at all or is suspiciously identical on every line. Even if the digital version can be technically safer, I feel the paper version tells a more compelling story that non-cryptography experts can follow along with.
wongarsu 1y ago
One solution is electric invoicing with digital signatures. For example there is the French Factur-X (known in Germany as ZUGFeRD), an invoice PDF with embedded XML data that can optionally be signed. That way if you receive the invoice you can check who signed it and if that's the same entity that supposedly issued the bill. There is a lot of movement in that space right now because European governments use this data for VAT processing and have discovered that signed machine-readable data is a lot better than stacks of paper audited by humans Another part of the solution is reporting such cases and making sure these people are charged with fraud

by igergg 1y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Lawyers have had the answer to this for a couple of hundred years. Have multiple copies of everything, at the time of signing. I usually get two copies of a contract. I sign them both, the other party signs them both, and we each get a copy. Same with any amendments or codicils. We are each responsible for maintaining our own copy. There should be a way to do this digitally.

Verdex 1y ago
Honestly, the paper solution is the solution. If they could do it digitally then you pull in your expert to testify that it was changed and they pull in their expert to testify that it wasn't or if it was then it was done by some mysterious hacker and they shouldn't be held liable for the attempt. Meanwhile with paper, the judge and jury can look at your copy and see that it was obviously printed out and the aged for 10 years where their copy is fresh off the presses and your signature on it is either not a match at all or is suspiciously identical on every line. Even if the digital version can be technically safer, I feel the paper version tells a more compelling story that non-cryptography experts can follow along with.

wongarsu 1y ago

One solution is electric invoicing with digital signatures. For example there is the French Factur-X (known in Germany as ZUGFeRD), an invoice PDF with embedded XML data that can optionally be signed. That way if you receive the invoice you can check who signed it and if that's the same entity that supposedly issued the bill. There is a lot of movement in that space right now because European governments use this data for VAT processing and have discovered that signed machine-readable data is a lot better than stacks of paper audited by humans Another part of the solution is reporting such cases and making sure these people are charged with fraud