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"e-signatures" are still a touchy subject in business. What can we do to help make them more acceptable and widespread? Is there any precedent that they are equ

"e-signatures" are still a touchy subject in business. What can we do to help make them more acceptable and widespread? Is there any precedent that they are equal to a paper signature?

CrazedGeek 14y ago
There's quite a bit of precedent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature#In_contract_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature#In_contrac...
fleitz 14y ago
Mostly they just need to accurately reproduce the signature. Machine signatures are good enough to make a law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen
guiseppecalzone 14y ago
Joseph here, cofounder of HelloSign. e-Signatures are legally binding. It's more of a cultural attachment that keeps us using "wet signatures". Check out our legal page for more details: http://www.hellosign.com/info/legal http://www.hellosign.com/info/legal In terms of making it more widespread, it takes some work. The way we're doing it is by combining e-signatures with other services and doing user education and cross pollination between the services. Our other product is HelloFax, which lets you send and receive faxes online. But, I think we're getting closer to an inflection point as society is starting to use e-signatures more and more.
- niggler 14y ago
  "Additionally, we encrypt all of your statically-stored user files and signature information in Amazon’s S3 servers" Why wouldn't you host those yourself? Aren't there concerns and operational risks involved when using Amazon?
  - sp332 14y ago
    S3 is one of Amazon's most stable cloud offerings. It's been years since they had a major outage. It's possibly even more stable than hosting yourself.
  - burnout1540 14y ago
    Amazon S3 is highly secure when configured correctly. The files are encrypted and only our servers can access them from our S3 buckets (i.e. no direct links). For more information on Amazon's security practices, see here: http://aws.amazon.com/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/security/ - Neal, co-founder of HelloFax
  - imperialWicket 14y ago
    It's difficult to weigh costs once you're at a static scale, but while bandwidth and storage is growing, cloud services tend to offer substantial savings. In this case, the cost benefits for S3 compared to owning your own servers are tremendous. There are always concerns and risks involved with hosting personal data, but it's not fundamentally different based on cloud hosting compared to colocation (or even managing hardware at your own location). There's mild complexity because 3rd parties are involved, but this is quickly becoming the norm.
sigkill 14y ago
Just as we carry out hand everywhere so that we can sign papers easily, each one of us should have a token or something equivalent that is based on PKI. And then native OS drivers to add functionality to sign any file with it. Something like "Right-click" -> "Sign" for the signer, and then he either inserts the token (preferably a USB) and a biometric/password or swipes it on an NFC surface. And thus, the document is signed. Even with native OS drivers, I don't think there's a way to implement this for authentication without the help of an online "profile", which I personally hate because it tends to centralization of data, which in this case is NOT a good idea.

"e-signatures" are still a touchy subject in business. What can we do to help make them more acceptable and widespread? Is there any precedent that they are equal to a paper signature?

CrazedGeek 14y ago

There's quite a bit of precedent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature#In_contract_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature#In_contrac...

fleitz 14y ago

Mostly they just need to accurately reproduce the signature. Machine signatures are good enough to make a law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen

guiseppecalzone 14y ago

Joseph here, cofounder of HelloSign. e-Signatures are legally binding. It's more of a cultural attachment that keeps us using "wet signatures". Check out our legal page for more details: http://www.hellosign.com/info/legal http://www.hellosign.com/info/legal In terms of making it more widespread, it takes some work. The way we're doing it is by combining e-signatures with other services and doing user education and cross pollination between the services. Our other product is HelloFax, which lets you send and receive faxes online. But, I think we're getting closer to an inflection point as society is starting to use e-signatures more and more.

niggler 14y ago
"Additionally, we encrypt all of your statically-stored user files and signature information in Amazon’s S3 servers" Why wouldn't you host those yourself? Aren't there concerns and operational risks involved when using Amazon?
- sp332 14y ago
  S3 is one of Amazon's most stable cloud offerings. It's been years since they had a major outage. It's possibly even more stable than hosting yourself.
- burnout1540 14y ago
  Amazon S3 is highly secure when configured correctly. The files are encrypted and only our servers can access them from our S3 buckets (i.e. no direct links). For more information on Amazon's security practices, see here: http://aws.amazon.com/security/ http://aws.amazon.com/security/ - Neal, co-founder of HelloFax
- imperialWicket 14y ago
  It's difficult to weigh costs once you're at a static scale, but while bandwidth and storage is growing, cloud services tend to offer substantial savings. In this case, the cost benefits for S3 compared to owning your own servers are tremendous. There are always concerns and risks involved with hosting personal data, but it's not fundamentally different based on cloud hosting compared to colocation (or even managing hardware at your own location). There's mild complexity because 3rd parties are involved, but this is quickly becoming the norm.

sigkill 14y ago

Just as we carry out hand everywhere so that we can sign papers easily, each one of us should have a token or something equivalent that is based on PKI. And then native OS drivers to add functionality to sign any file with it. Something like "Right-click" -> "Sign" for the signer, and then he either inserts the token (preferably a USB) and a biometric/password or swipes it on an NFC surface. And thus, the document is signed. Even with native OS drivers, I don't think there's a way to implement this for authentication without the help of an online "profile", which I personally hate because it tends to centralization of data, which in this case is NOT a good idea.