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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

As handwriting and cursive skills decline, how useful are signatures going to be? I know no two of my signatures ever look the same.

In Japan instead of signatures they use personal stamps. Stamps used for your government business or banking get registered, and they can match stamps from the slight imperfections. If your stamp is stolen you register it as such so they know not to accept it.

A lot of expats here complain about the stamp system, but when they get their bank to use their signature instead, they complain that the bank actually verifies the signature, and I've heard stories of people refilling out the same form 3 times just to get their signature to match the one on file!

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I've been declined services because my signature doesn't match my passport - like many, my handwriting has deteriorated significantly due to keyboard use and a document almost 10 years old isn't reflective of my current writing skills: I convinced the clerk to let to practice my signature on paper until it looked like my passport. Absurd and clearly insecure! I got some enjoyment out of the ridiculousness of it but I imagine others less cognisant of the farcical nature might have given up. (This wasn't a bank at least, it was a vehicle rental center in South America)

> In Japan instead of signatures they use personal stamps. Stamps used for your government business or banking get registered, and they can match stamps from the slight imperfections. If your stamp is stolen you register it as such so they know not to accept it.

Isn't that the same system that was used in Europe with signet rings until the 17th century? I wonder why signatures replaced signet rings?

>I wonder why signatures replaced signet rings?

As the need for legal documentation spread downward from the upper classes, they needed an identification method that anyone could use, and wasn't limited to people who could afford to have a unique piece of jewelry crafted.

signet rings were introduced for two reasons: 1) make sure any tampering with the content is visible 2) people were mostly illiterates at the time so it made sense for them to have something else than signing with XXX My guess is that as illiteracy in Europe decreased the need for signet rings also decreased

Signatures are already worthless. No one verifies them anyway. It's just a fancy way of saying "I agree".

If you don't believe me, next time you use a credit card with signature, just scribble on the pinpad. No one will bat an eye.

>Signatures are already worthless. No one verifies them anyway. It's just a fancy way of saying "I agree".

They are not meant to be verified on the spot.

They are meant to be verified as a record IF and WHEN a dispute occurs.

Credit card signatures are intended to be verified on the spot. That's why the back of the card says it isn't valid until signed. The cashier was originally supposed to compare the signature on the card to the signature made at point of sale to verify the CC holder's identity. https://consumerist.com/2014/07/19/10-answers-to-credit-card...

Of course this doesn't happen, and for good reason too since the signature made on a resistive touchscreen ends up looking nothing like that on the credit card.

Also none of my cards are signed because when I do sign them, the ink rubs off after a few days! So I assume the whole signature system is purely ceremonial at this point. Or at the least it's a way to say a human was present with a physical card.

I'm curious though, how does that apply to other people using your card?

For example, my wife wants to use my CC so we asked our CC company what we need to do to add her, to make her a valid signature.

The answer? Nothing. I can have anyone I want use my card. They sign it with anything they want. It's up to me down the road to claim fraudulent charges, and if I do, the person who signed is the one committing fraud.

This was two cards, both Visa cards offered from different companies.

Wouldn't that be at odds with what you've mentioned here?

Merchants shouldn't be accepting other people using your card, no matter their claimed relationship to you.

If you want your wife to be able to use it, you get her added as an Authorized User and she gets a new card with the same number but her name and her signature.

> If you want your wife to be able to use it, you get her added as an Authorized User and she gets a new card with the same number but her name and her signature.

Yea.. but who do we get her added with? Because, as i said, we tried that. We called to get her added, see what we need, etc.

They said nothing. They literally said anyone can use my card, and it's assumed fine until i dispute it later.

So we literally tried to get her added, but couldn't - they said it's not needed, and that was that. This happened for both cards, lol.

CC companies are usually more than happy to issue another card on your account with a different name if you ask.

I was told that if that was once the case, it is the case no longer- really the signature is only to verify that someone was there to have made the purchase, to decrease the store's liability if it is a fraudulent charge.

This is why the charge to the card goes through before you have to sign anything. Even on pos systems where you sign on the screen, I get the text message notifying me that my card was charged even before I start to sign on the screen.

Instead of signing my credit card, I write "Ask for ID". Most vendors don't check the signature anyway, but those who do are usually prompted to ask for my ID, which is my hoped outcome. I've been a victim of credit fraud several times via both theft and skimming so it's an interesting topic to me.

That hasn't been my experience at all. I write "Please Check ID" in the signature block on my cards and I think that, in the last 9 years that I've been doing this, I've been asked for my ID all of one or two times. I do notice when cashiers, etc..., flip the card around and I just don't think they actually read or process what is written there. Or they just don't care.

They flip the card to see where the strip is in order to swipe it correctly. That's it.

I get asked for my ID when I hand the card to the cashier. I never get asked if the card is one of those self serv terminals.

I often use my wife's credit card, very rarely asked for a signature. When I do I just sign her name, looks nothing like her signature haha.

> As handwriting and cursive skills decline, how useful are signatures going to be? I know no two of my signatures ever look the same.

It's not even just handwriting skills - my handwriting is fine, but I was recently asked to sign two documents and there were obvious differences between the two. It's because I've signed maybe four things in the last year, so it's not something I'm going to reliably reproduce identically. I could use my standard handwriting to sign, but I'd be trivial to forge rendering it pointless anyway (I deliberately use print rather than joined-up script [which was taught at school] for clarity's sake).

Funny side note to this, your hanko(the stamp) can actually be anything you want. I was very tempted to go with a smiley face and my name under it in katakana :-p

And a great thing about Japanese is they have smiley faces built in ツ。

> A lot of expats here complain about the stamp system, but when they get their bank to use their signature instead, they complain that the bank actually verifies the signature, and I've heard stories of people refilling out the same form 3 times just to get their signature to match the one on file!

This happened to me several times. That's because they use a machine to verify differences in signatures and as long as the machines do not OK the operation you have to retry. It's retarded, because that verification is made for stamps and not signatures and therefore it probably is not trained properly for the subtles differences in signatures from one to the next.

And the stamp system in Japan is retarded anyway, because it's super easy to reproduce one's stamp if you have a paper with that imprint lying around. It's not like the stamp is precise at the nanometer level or something.

> how useful are signatures going to be?

I dont even know why we need signatures honestly - at the bank you should be able to present your national ID or passport and that should be sufficient. And nobody writes checks anymore anyway.

Meanwhile, Estonia has a digital certificate on the chipset of their ID card for all their citizen...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card

Japan has this too now, but it's pretty new and not required so not everyone has one yet.

If you do have it, you can use it to print super official documents at the convenience store and pay your taxes online (if you get a chip reader for your computer).*

*I know in the US you can pay taxes online with just some personal info for verification, but for some reason Japan is super serious about verifying online financial transactions.

https://www.kojinbango-card.go.jp/en/kojinbango/index.html

Oh I didn't hear about this. Thanks for the link!

I never understood why official institutions are so concerned about verifications when you're the one giving them money? And they all do this, the same thing is here where I live. I understand the need for a positive identification when you're buying something, but for paying taxes? What, someone will go around and pay other people's taxes? And even so, why the government cares, as long as it's paid?

It's not actually for paying taxes, it's for filing taxes.

If someone filed a fraudulent tax report in your name you could be liable ("I made zero dollars last year!"). Actually paying the taxes can be done in cash anonymously at a post office bank teller (or at a convenience store for municipal taxes)

> I dont even know why we need signatures honestly - at the bank you should be able to present your national ID or passport and that should be sufficient

Because those don't exist in the US. We don't have national IDs and not everyone is eligible for a passport.

Passports are really expensive in the UK too, are they affordable in USA?

A UK passport costs £72.50 and is valid for 10 years. For someone taking one budget package holiday per year it represents about 2 percent of the cost. This seems inexpensive to me.

Affordability is not the point. Not everyone is _allowed_ a passport.

You can't get a passport if, for example, you have outstanding criminal charges that you are awaiting trial for on bail. Should that prevent you from being able to get or use a bank account? You might need that to be able to pay a lawyer.

>It's retarded >is retarded

It's 2017. This type of ableist language should not be socially acceptable anymore, anymore than calling something the n-word as an adjective. Differing abilities should not be an insult.

It's 2017, you should be mature enough to shrug off language like this, and distinguish between slang and formal meaning. Differing ability always becomes an insult, and if you knew anything about the march of language, you'd know that this is a treadmill you cannot catch up with.

It's not language I use or agree with, but my opinion isn't going to change something that turns out to be fundamental to how people communicate. You need to learn how to live and let live.

The UK had no national ID card, and people certainly do write cheques (although I wish they'd stop)

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