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Comment by rzimmerman | Hacker News Reader

It is really surprising the amount of paranoia and thought that goes into software security compared to pretty much everything else. A driver's license is mostly a laminated piece of paper with some holograms. Social security numbers are 9 digit passwords you share over and over again that can't really be changed.

I was recently asked to sign a receipt at a store when I'd used Apple Pay. My phone uses a fingerprint reader to authorize a one-time-use token for payment that's transmitted in a cryptographically secure way. But that signature - that's the real unfakeable proof.

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The signature is used to help convict criminals.

It's a small part of a package of evidence that proves intent to deceive. If I use someone else's credit card I can lie and say it was an accident. I use someone else's credit card and sign their name, not my name, on the slip it's harder for me to make the same lie.

I always sign my real name, or sometimes a smiley face drawing when I am using other people's credit cards (with their permission!) No cashier has called me on it yet.

Almost certainly the person who owns the credit card is contractually bound such that they can't legally give you permission to use it, you don't have permission because the bank owns it and is the only entity able to give you such permission.

Legally speaking, perhaps. I still like to ask permission before using other people's funds though.

With the touchpads that most credit card readers use, it's pretty hard to get a signature that looks like anything beyond random seismometer readings.

Signatures on credit cards are an interesting artifact. Planet Money did a nice podcast on signatures a year or two ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/08/29/344034815/episo...

Apparently signatures are still used as a method of determining liability for fraudulent charges, who knew?

In the UK at least, receipts often are contracts and often have one or two terms on them. The singing is to prove you acknowledge the contract.

I'm in the UK, have worked frontline and back office retail and never seen this. Could you give an example?

i.e. you go into a car park and upon buying the ticket they make you sign it because on the ticket they have written 'We are not responsible if your car or anything within it gets stolen or damaged.'

This term is onerous and as such needs to be agreed to which the signature does.

The purpose of the signature is to establish legal solemnity, not identity or authority. It's why you can sign with just an X, and why really important contracts still need to notarized (which does establish identity).

You can relatively easily add credit cards to Apple Pay that don't belong to you.

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