Show HN: SignRequest – Electronic Signatures for everyone | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SignRequest – Electronic Signatures for everyone

signrequest.com

42 pointssndr_srq236 comments

We've banned this account and this site for using a well-known upvote-selling and comment-selling service. I wish everyone would realize that this is obvious in the data and not worth the risk. Perhaps someone could also communicate to the upvote-sellers that they're wasting their time?

All: Spam votes and spam comments will get your accounts and sites banned on HN, so please don't.

Hey dang, can you comment about the recent spree of comment spam here? (I mean the really trashy spam, not the brigading.) Does that happen every now and then or is it something new?

Are you referring to "Reddit style comments"?

I've seen a bunch of "make money online with this one weird trick" style comments, so probably those.

yes, those.

Gotcha, I haven't seen those spam comments recently, must be heavy moderation.

It happens now and then but the latest wave of is new in how much of it there is. If we have to, we'll write software to kill it, but we're sort of lazy about that, so we're hoping the existing anti-spam measures will work first.

Fortunately, from a community point of view it's just a nuisance, because it all gets flagged. But we don't want to let it clog the system up too much.

OK, thanks. hope the existing measures work.

I think you missed some though:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14760481

I mean those accounts seem to be not banned yet, although they apparently stopped submitting/commenting.

This is the sort of thing you need to be sending to hn@ycombinator.com instead of posting here. We can't come close to seeing all the comments on HN, but we do see all the emails to that address.

How do they make money? Don't love the idea of my potentially-sensitive documents or contacts being mined to sell ads.

Note, too, that this is far from the only electronic signature provider [1][2][3], let alone free one [4][5][6]. Seems like a new one pops up every day.

[1] https://account.docusign.com/#/username

[2] https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/sign.html

[3] https://rightsignature.com/pricing

[4] https://app.hellosign.com/info/pricing

[5] http://www.esignatures.com

[6] https://www.digisigner.com

Not a single one of the free services you listed allows you to upload a document and send it to contacts without signing up first. I'm sure SignRequest will change its UI at one point to make you sign up, but currently that's its best feature in my opinion.

I've reviewed all of those services and none of the pricing models are right for me. Based on the features I'd like to use, I'm bumped into a higher price bracket even though I'm only doing 3-4 contracts per month. At that volume it's just been easier to either do it in person or have my signer print and send back a signature page. Whereas $7 or $14 per month is an easy signup.

> Based on the features I'd like to use, I'm bumped into a higher price bracket even though I'm only doing 3-4 contracts per month

I have no horse in this race, but out of curiosity, what are those features?

I've been wanting this product for 6 months, and didn't have the will to make something internally for our company. Great product, you've nailed my price point (small business), going to do the trial and see whats up.

I've been waiting years for something like this! I actually did make an internal version for my company (a small underfunded startup) since paying a hefty subscription for something docusign and hellosign is a bit absurd just to easily sign documents electronically without downloaded software day to day personally or for small business

This looks great. I didn't try it with a custom document, but the demo document worked very well and it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to use with other documents.

One minor grievance: when converting, the client polls to see if the pdf was converted and shows a loading bar for every poll request which made it seem like things were broken.

Things that I liked:

- Only one slightly annoying request to sign up at the end, but the opt-out was clear and redirects back to the landing page.

- The signing log is included with the completed document in the email. Services like Docusign make you log in order to view the completed document and I don't think they provide any sort of log.

- The actual signing process is simple. I didn't try saving my signature or anything like that, but there's an import option which looks like it would be very easy to use with Preview's signature output.

I'm working on something similar right now'although, it's targeting a different audience. Obviously this has been under development for while, given the complexity of the service.

I'd be interested to hear the origin story of this idea and company.

There's something similar in Finland from a company called Visma: https://allekirjoitus.visma.fi/

It's tied to the de facto standard bank/other authentication system called TUPAS[1] which is used to prove your identity to government services, banks, etc. etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUPAS

I'm sorry, but is it legally binding if all you're doing is scribbling into a text box? Presumably you'd need to do some sort of identity verification.

Digital signatures carry the same legal authority as a wet signature in most cases (US advice). Very little verification exists.

But... Then you can literally just copy it. I don't really understand how signatures are still a thing, but this...

Well, you can also forge a regular signature. In proper legal contexts, you need a witness to a signature (which is a justice-of-peace or similarly trusted party in Australia) who will check your identification and witness you signing the document. Signatures are more of a ceremonial thing at this point, they just are used to signify that at the time you agree with a document. If you dispute the validity of a signature, it becomes a forensic investigation (which would also apply for electronic signatures I imagine -- ignoring that digital forensics is such a bad science).

Scanned copies of passports are also seen as sufficient ID in some contexts (though they should be notarised copies, very few online services require that). And that's even worse becase the person getting the copy could just impersonate you with it.

I would keep in mind that most disputes are not of the "I never signed this" variety.

Even companies like DocuSign acknowledge that fact: "DocuSign electronic signatures have never been successfully repudiated or challenged in any court."

Interesting. Not surprising I suppose, since a "wet" signature doesn't really mean anything either.

Though, from my personal experience I can tell you that I'd know if a "wet" signature was mine or not - where as all of my digital signatures could be from anyone; easily forged and difficult to verify, even by me.

Is there a reason why you don't electronically sign the PDF? I know to become an official Adobe Signing Authority is expensive but I feel like if it's your business it should be a priority.

Edit: Link https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/approved-trust-list2.html

Offtopic, what's your frontend stack? The pages are super fast!

Having spent time researching this space for some potential freelancing projects, non-public API pricing is a deal breaker.

Why should I use this over something like Keybase?

The free plan looks great!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com