> For bureaucratic reasons, a colleague of mine had to print, sign, scan and send by email a high number of pages. To save trees, ink, time, and to stick it to the bureaucrats, I wrote this script.
Though personally I just use something like Xournal++ to edit the PDF (add text, add a signature image, etc.) and then use the following command to "fake scan it":
I don't even bother with making it look like scanned. Just adding a png signature with Xournal and that's it. Mostly government requests it so they never cared enough to complain.
Yup, I just "sign" in Acrobat Reader using a signature image I scanned a long time ago, which should be pretty obvious to most people what I've done. But nobody ever complains.
I know its open source, but do we really want to upload a (maybe sensitive) pdf to an unknown server? Because people will, when its in the form of a website.
Heh. Probably unnecessary to make it look like it was put in the scanner misaligned. Just scan the signature itself and past that image onto the image of the document.
Meh. That really doesn’t always look very legit. Especially if you can “select” all the text, and when you select the signature you see a nice box around it. It’s then too obvious it was added as an image.
I don’t disagree that the whole “signing and scanning” is dumb, though.
This could go a lot further. I once did something similar with a rubberstamp image taken from the web, replaced some of the on-a-curve text in the GIMP, applied various filters to make the seal look like it was stamped on unevenly, and composited it over the page. Did the trick.
Would be neat to have this take a rubberstamp image and do all that work too.
I always use Preview to "sign" documents due to a lack of a scanner, but I've found in some cases, companies refuse to accept the document because they think it's not actually printed, signed with a pen, and then scanned...
Tools like this will skew and degrade the image in a similar way to a scanner so that it fits this ridiculous requirement
Have you tried signing a piece of paper with a pen and using Preview’s signature scan feature? It creates a very realistic looking signature in my opinion.
Yep, that is what I use. The signature itself looks completely handwritten (because it is), but the companies in question complain that it can't possibly be a handwritten signature because the document didn't look printed and scanned (???). It's slightly ridiculous, but not much I could do other than find a scanner/printer or "comply" with their document formatting requirement
Preview has to be one of the most under-appreciated apps on MacOS. It implements so much handy everyday functionality that requires third-party software on Windows. Or did, last time I used Windows (admittedly some time ago).
on windows i find myself bouncing around a lot between pdf viewers, choosing between lightweight but feature sparse options (sumatra) and heavier, more featured programs (acrobat, foxit)
Preview has an odd selection of functions, though. On one hand it allows you to do plenty of these functions that you mention, but otoh misses on very trivial stuff like "I'd like to make my image a bit larger so I could paste another one next to it".
Ahh, yes. I have wanted to do this too, and can’t. I suspect Preview isn’t the tool I’m supposed to use, even though it’s the ones I want to use as it doesn’t almost everything I want.
On feature that I use a lot in Preview is to combine pdf's.
If you e.g. have a pdf invoice and want to combine that with the corresponding pdf receipt from the bank, I just open the two pdf files side by side in thumbnail view and just drag the pages (thumbnails) I want from one document to the other where I want to place them; rearranging the pages (thumbnails) later if I need to in the same thumbnail view. I am a huge fan of Preview! :-)
Ghostscript is similar to ImageMagick in that it does so much that learning to do one specific thing is hard. But that line merged ~300MB of PDFs together in 20s on my M1. Doing that in Preview causes a beach ball.
I love the integration with iOS as well. I was pleasantly surprised to find an option in Preview to use my iPad and the Apple Pencil for my signature. It even popped up some otherwise hidden UI on the iPad to do so.
Same. You don't need a camera, you can doodle a signature with a mouse and it's fine. I bought a house this way with no trouble.
It's funny to me to look at a company like DocuSign whose shares surged early on the in the pandemic because they expected a dramatic increase in need for digital signatures and then the price crashed when it turns out that signatures aren't actually useful and we can just live without them.
This issue this app attempts to solve is companies that insist on a scanned "wet" signature, and will send it back if it looks like you just pasted in your signature stamp.
I vaguely recall hearing a while ago that it may be counted as a forgery if you copy and paste your own signature that way. These days it even happens that you can simply type your name as a signature, but it's quite hard to be sure what's okay and what's potentially a crime with these bureaucracies. But for a tool like that, it might be useful to write down in which jurisdictions it's certainly okay (or not) to use.
IANAL. Wikipedia, "Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself)."
Favourite part has to be where you can have a list of signatures to randomly choose from. I assume it was done so that not all signs look same and robotic ?
And that raises the question for those of us that had to sign a bunch of documents when things were locked down: What purpose does the signature serve? It was a constant hassle that wasted a bunch of my time, and it ultimately was not a signature.
I had to look it up when doing deals with someone in Japan, and Wikipedia (iirc) told me that specifically in Japan just scribbling over the pdf via the touchpad is not a legal thing—you have to do the paper dance. Judging from the comments here, France also doesn't encourage all-digital laziness.
IANAL, but this depends on the jurisdiction. In some places (e.g. Ontario, Canada), e-signatures are fine; often this is because the law explicitly says they have the same effect as a "wet" signature. In this case, "looking real" doesn't enter into it.
In others (e.g. Denmark), you don't even need to sign - merely stating your intent to accept a contract, and having a clear record of that intention, is enough. In this case, again, "looking real" is a non-issue; you can even send an email in some cases.
In yet others, you will definitely be asked for a "wet" signature, and a digital signature is not considered legally acceptable. Here looking real could matter; if your signature is obviously non-physical, it may be refused.
This also varies by situation. In some places, banks want to see a wet signature, _and_ will compare it with an existing wet signature they have on file. In this case, it very much matters how real it looks, where "real" means "matches this other real signature". (Does this make sense? Arguably no, but that's the way it currently is.)
Singapore has this halfway thing which means some documents can be e-signed (purchase orders) but more “serious” documents like lease agreements need a wet signature.
Signing documents with visual signatures instead of cryptographic ones is already extremely archaic, but having to make them look like being signed by hand is absurdly so.
> For bureaucratic reasons, a colleague of mine had to print, sign, scan and send by email a high number of pages. To save trees, ink, time, and to stick it to the bureaucrats, I wrote this script
I have, in the past but not recently, run into situations where I need to visually sign something, and the form was rejected when I digitally signed it with MacOS Preview because they required the form be printed, signed, and re-scanned.
The primary use case is addressing situations where wet ink signatures are required by a party to a transaction without having to print, sign, and scan a document.
Yes, it is an odd combination of legacy (sometimes regulatory) requirements and modern technology, but there are numerous situations where only wet ink signatures are accepted, and “digital signatures” are not accepted—even though the document is stored in a digital format.
Wet ink signatures are most commonly required in finance / investment / banking transactions. They are sometimes required for B2B transactions. While not as common in the US as in other countries, you can also run into requirements where documents must be signed via wet ink signature under seal (or stamp). Scanning a document with a signature line that has been embossed with a company seal looks somewhat comical and arguably legible (especially if the scan is done with a feed-through scanner) but is required to get business done sometimes.
Don't know about different Jurisdictions, but from where I am - this has NO legal binding whatsoever. We have those gov issued digital, invisible signatures for that, embedded in our personal ID card. Whatever is properly signed with digital signature, the printed out page bears no legal force.
Anyway, businesses still like to do it this way ("Signing" pdf by applying some pixels). I wonder if it is just an inconvenience to overcome both for businesses and consumers that just write this off and don't bother that it is such a weak binding. It is like some dirty workaround/hack to put those silly signatures on digital documents to get stuff done.
Same over here! Only difference is that with our IDs/certs you usually have a visible cert block on the PDFs. You can get it to be invisible somehow, but that's a bit of a hassle.
But yes, anything that's not a proper digital signature might as well just be a random png pasted into a pdf. No legal binding power whatsoever.
For the software they provide us to sign documents, there is a checkbox when I sign PDF files - whether I want some overlay that indicated that it is digitally signed or not. Thats probably the user friendly part of digital signatures :)
Yup, there was a literal act of congress that made e-signatures legally valid but it's not worth arguing with anyone who asks for an "ink" signature ime.
When companies ask for signatures to be done in a certain way, it’s often not because those things are a requirement to be a valid contract under the law, but because they want more evidence to support them should the contract be brought into question in court.
You could theoretically, in some cases, run a business on nothing but verbal contracts, but you would be foolish to do so because you’d have difficulty proving anything if it were disputed.
Same here. Real signatures on paper as well as cryptographic signatures are legally binding. Pasting a picture onto a PDF isn't but nobody wants to deal with the bureaucracy so they do it anyway. Getting a cryptographic token you can use to legally sign things is such a bureaucratic nightmare too, nobody wants to do it, including myself and I really like this stuff.
I don't know where you live but in the EU eIDAS regulation sees a scanned document as a Simple Electronic Signature (SES). This is the most basic possible form of signing which is accepted.
So within the EU a scanned document is valid though the law does say the method used needs to be proportional to whats at stake.
I've noticed that the court documents issued by civil courts in Turkey have electronic signatures with signed hashes for each of the signatories (judge, clerk and all else) in every document. To make people not freak out, they seem to have also added a PNG image of a slightly smeared generic wet-ink looking signature above the hash so it looks real on first sight. But if you look closely the signatures are all the same, and the signature says e-imza (e-signature) in cursive. Heh.
Another cool thing, the whole document itself does have a hash where you can go to the website of the ministry of justice and input the hash to verify the document. It was unexpectedly neat.
Comments in this sub-thread need to distinguish between two dimensions to a signature: is it capable of legally binding the signatory? In most cases, any format will do. Is it going to be easy to enforce (I.e., to prove it was you that signed, and not your dog headbutting your mouse?) That's a damn sight harder, and many forms of (legally valid!) E-signature might not be accepted for that reason. Depends how much assurance is needed in the circumstances.
In the US, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, passed by most states, clarifies that basically any sound or symbol or process is a valid electronic signature. This is in line with general contract law, under which any manifestation, written or verbal or even non-verbal, that would reasonably be understood as assent, is sufficient to form a contract. Of course, if you want a court to enforce that contract, you're going to have to prove that the other party did provide assent.
I don't know where you are at, but I know for a fact that a scan of a signed document is binding in the EU. As far as I understand it doesn't even have to be a scanned document, you can sing a digital document by adding an image of your signature or just using your finger and a touchscreen.
In the US from what I read[1] the situation is pretty much the same a scan of a signed document is binding as well as non cryptographic electronic signatures.
It has been four hours, OP is nowhere to be seen. I hope they're okay amidst all the legalese.
More seriously, do let us know what you find. I've heard both sides on this but the "verbal agreement is also binding (just gl proving it)" side is usually from better sources like an actual lawyer posting on a forum as opposed to a random boss making claims about signature requirements, for example.
> from better sources like an actual lawyer posting on a foru
Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters. It's just what I think I know, but I may very well be wrong :)
What I read is that even informational documents are considered in court. However document that bears legal validity, must contain: document name, date, signature (with exceptions) and recipient.
However I did found a relevant quote:
> Section 5.
> (1) A document shall be signed in one's own hand. A document of the organization shall be signed by the person whose position is indicated in the document. A personal signature reproduced in a paper document using technical means shall not ensure legal force of the document.
But I'm not sure if print->sign->scan qualifies, as the signature itself isn't put there with technical means. But this rules out putting image as a signature on PDF.
This is not talking about e-documents. E-document states that it must be signed with secure electronic signature.
> Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters.
Sorry I phrased my previous reply badly. What I meant is generally the two camps on this, that typically one of them seems to speak from a more knowledgeable position/perspective than the other. I did not mean to suggest that you are not knowledgeable!
Generally speaking in most countries the civil law does not specify how the contract is supposed to be made. You can buy from the shop with just a nod of your head. Only some specific agreements have to be written down (and even fewer made in front of the notary).
This sounds really unlikely. Does your country also not honor any sort of verbal contracts?
Would a business agreement concluded over email not be binding? Can you get away with fraud by just tricking people into agreeing to use docusign?
If (not cryptographically) esigned contracts are not binding in your country, how does that not cripple law enforcements ability to combat fraud involving such contracts?
If I sell you a car and we use a contract like this, do I then get to keep both the car and the money? If not, how is that contract not binding?
I really hate dealing with my printer (or any printer for that matter), so I make pretty liberal use of my drawing tablet at this point. I import the PDF into Krita, use the ballpoint pen brush, and sign. I export to PNG, then use an imagemagick script to rotate it some random number between 1-3 degrees, and add noise onto it to look like a scan.
It's a pain, but it's still less annoying than dealing with a printer.
I knew that, and I do run macOS, but the signature always looks "digital" to me. It's not bad, but with Krita and it's pen or pencil brushes, in combination with a decent drawing tablet (well, as decent as a Huion screen tablet is) with a pressure-sensitive pen, I can get something that looks outright indistinguishable to a physical signature.
Nothing too crazy. There’s a built in ballpoint pen brush that I think looks pretty good. My tablet is pressure sensitive so it allows for the slightly uneven ink density that you get with cheap ballpoints.
I've signed and returned almost everything requiring a signature for years this way, you can even have multiple signatures (helpful when you need spouse to sign something too...) in Preview to speed up dealing with these kind of tasks. I've never once been asked to sign it with a pen instead, even for relatively complex transactions like houses/cars.
Because Preview lets you draw the signature using the TrackPad and a finger, I've had no difficulty making a very convincing replica of my actual signature in Preview.
While the linked tool may "look" more convincing with fake photocopy marks etc, for just signatures its not been necessary to go beyond Preview for me ever. In the US so much business is conducted on paperfree platforms like DocuSign etc that I don't think many people even notice the fact the signature is digital anymore, given platforms like DocuSign do more or less the same thing.
I had passport photos rejected due to my eyes being too shaded or something. One eye seemed a little darker according to the error messages. I tried taking new photos, including ones from I paid for (done at a pharamacy) and still failed.
In Preview I copied one eye and put it over my troubled eye, reversed. It worked.
I’ve been though face detection systems in various countries (US, UK, France) and I seem to get through ok.
I should probably do that. I've always hesitated because the paranoid part of me thinks they'll catch on to it being digital if I have to sign in ten different places and they see that the signature is literally identical for each one. My Krita solution, while annoying, allows for me to have a slightly different signature for each one, for each form I sign, allowing it to pass all but the most judicious level of forensics.
Granted, no one is going CSI on anything I sign. I should probably just make like ten pngs of my signature and paste those in.
I have three different signatures and a several versions of my initials loaded into Preview.app for use in signing PDFs because I don't want them all to look the same.
Preview is a killer app and it gets me though all sorts of situations., document signing (and doctoring), and PDF manipulation first and foremost.
Combined with notes.app which has some very nice features (document scan, share, to-do lists, reliable sync, adding of files, search etc) it is Apple at its best.
I do the same. I just have one saved. No one has ever complained, even when it's blatantly obvious that I didn't sign it by hand.
I figure even if they do complain, it doesn't matter. Its not like I don't have permission to do what I want with my own signature. The worst might be that they come back and say "sign it properly please" and then I have to go through the effort of printing it out and scanning it back in.
Just a couple months ago I had a couple of forms rejected with a note “needs wet signature”
They were for a 401(k) plan I was updating RMD choices. I got the PDF form from their site, filled it out in Preview, pasted my signature PNG, and used an app on my phone to fax it(!) to their number.
Got rejected. Had to actually print the damn things and sign them with a pen, scan them again with my phone’s camera, and re-fax them.
As an HR administrator for a small business, this absolutely grinds my gears. According to every accountant and consultant I've ever talked to, the "wet signature" rule is enshrined in federal law (although I have yet to be able to find out exactly where). It applies to all brokerage operations (opening your custodial accounts); employee applications (even internal to your own company that never leave your own filing cabinet - keep in case of audit!); statements of information (form 5500) filed with the IRS (it's the only form you can't submit electronically - needs a wet signature?!). For everything else we deal with a saved drop-in signature in Acrobat works just fine. Almost not worth the employee's savings given their low participation rate and general ambivalence to the whole program.
My mistake on the 5500 - we have a consultant / tax preparer that files the actual form for us, so it does look like the actual filing is electronic. What I was incorrectly remembering, it turns out, was that the authorization form for our consultant to electronically file needed a wet signature.
Yes, I bet it would have, and I wish I had heard about it then!
When I refaxed the forms, I just removed the PNG signatures from the PDFs first (leaving all other form fields typed in), printed them, signed them, made sure the two signatures were different in obvious ways (but still the "same"!), and scanned them at deliberately low resolution.
This program sounds like it automates all those steps.
This has happened to me in the past. Now I always make sure to damage the paper and avoid putting it in the scanner straight. Bend a corner, wrinkle it a little, and select the image mode on the scanner to avoid the background looking too clean.
This, but with extra noise around the signature and with at least 4 unique copies, max number of times one has to sign full name a document (in my personal xp).
Whomever is going to read it and check for digital, will probably check closer on the signed pages. Also make sure the signature isn't too perfect and not too regular on the ink :)
It depends on what you're signing. My letters of authorization to my bank require a "wet signature." Scanned or photographed and emailed is fine, but they want you to print and sign, and they've sent it back to me when they can tell I've used a digital stamp.
This product looks interesting, although the idea of me entering coordinates for the stamp instead of just stamping it in a GUI is not at all appealing...
Ditto, had it only once that they complained the signature on separate documents was identical. Well, just wrote it down a couple more times in case I run into that again.
When we were buying a house back in 2009 (before electronic document signatures, which are the most amazing thing ever compared with the old way) we had to sign zillions of different pieces of paperwork going back and forth while making offers and so on. I was doing most of this during the day from the office, and all the paperwork had to be signed by both me and my wife.
So what I'd do was take the PDF, paste in my wife's signature, print it out, sign it myself, then fax it over. Never had any problems.
I've seen this one, I think it was on HN about a year ago, but a lot of the forms I've been signing in the last year have been stuff containing a fair amount of personal information (e.g. wife's immigration stuff, refinancing a house, banking annoyances, etc.). I can't really audit the code for an online service, and I find it unlikely that either Krita or ImageMagick are sending this information externally, considering both seem to work fine even without an internet connection.
EDIT: Clicking on it, I see the source code is available. If I can run it on my local box then this might be a little less nasty than mucking with the `convert` command.
Years ago I user a good blue Ball pen and signed in a blank paper. I scanned this in high resolution, cropped, fattened the lines, removed background and saved it as a transparent PNG.
I added this PNG as a stamp to my favourite PDF software and have signed many many documents.
The thing to remember is to flatten comments after I stamped my signature onto the document.
Having moved from Germany to Austria I was pleasantly surprised that they have a functional national ID system that you can use to sign PDFs with a qualified electronic signature. Within Austria, they have been accepted everywhere so far.
Usually sending them the following helps them be less stubborn:
> Gemäß Artikel 25 eIDAS-Verordnung hat eine qualifizierte elektronische Signatur die gleiche Rechtswirkung wie eine handschriftliche Unterschriftund wird in allen Mitgliedstaaten anerkannt.
Doesn't work always, but the times it doesn't I usually find a competitor that does prove to be more cooperative pretty easily!
Oh my goodness, I have dealt with a pedantic bureaucrat who rejected my signed PDF and insisted on the hand signature hahaha. So I printed the document out with my digital signature pasted twice, one below the other, and added a couple sharpie smudges to the bottom one before scanning to quietly “insist back” that there’s no difference between my manual and digital one. Regardless, The automaton was satisfied!
Another comment: I completely love PDF exchange editor. Used their free version for years and finally paid for it which I should have done a long time ago.
I send "fax" via https://epost.de which is incredibly useful public authorities. You upload a PDF and they print it and send it as snailmail. Since they verify your identity, it has the legal status of a fax (is my understanding).
398 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 460 ms ] threadI hear you, fellow Frenchman !
Though personally I just use something like Xournal++ to edit the PDF (add text, add a signature image, etc.) and then use the following command to "fake scan it":
convert -density 150 input.pdf -colorspace gray -blur 0x0.1 -sharpen 0x5.0 -level 10%,90% -rotate -0.5 -sharpen 0x1.2 output-scanned.pdf
I'm no way affiliated to foxit but that functionality there works. And saves trees.
Makes me actually like signing things. And it's also wonderful for sending feedback on stuff.
I don’t disagree that the whole “signing and scanning” is dumb, though.
Would be neat to have this take a rubberstamp image and do all that work too.
Tools like this will skew and degrade the image in a similar way to a scanner so that it fits this ridiculous requirement
i've never thought about replacing preview.
On feature that I use a lot in Preview is to combine pdf's. If you e.g. have a pdf invoice and want to combine that with the corresponding pdf receipt from the bank, I just open the two pdf files side by side in thumbnail view and just drag the pages (thumbnails) I want from one document to the other where I want to place them; rearranging the pages (thumbnails) later if I need to in the same thumbnail view. I am a huge fan of Preview! :-)
I installed it with Homebrew, but the project home is yonder: https://www.ghostscript.com/
I wanted to convert XML to JSON. Well: Tough luck. Go download some app by some person from the store. We are sure it's completely safe!
Want to convert a video to a gif? Get another bloatware program.
There is so much command line stuff Linux users take for granted that Windows people struggle with every day.
It's funny to me to look at a company like DocuSign whose shares surged early on the in the pandemic because they expected a dramatic increase in need for digital signatures and then the price crashed when it turns out that signatures aren't actually useful and we can just live without them.
Note defraud.
I think the goal is to minimize the risk of someone rejecting your document because it looks photoshopped.
In others (e.g. Denmark), you don't even need to sign - merely stating your intent to accept a contract, and having a clear record of that intention, is enough. In this case, again, "looking real" is a non-issue; you can even send an email in some cases.
In yet others, you will definitely be asked for a "wet" signature, and a digital signature is not considered legally acceptable. Here looking real could matter; if your signature is obviously non-physical, it may be refused.
This also varies by situation. In some places, banks want to see a wet signature, _and_ will compare it with an existing wet signature they have on file. In this case, it very much matters how real it looks, where "real" means "matches this other real signature". (Does this make sense? Arguably no, but that's the way it currently is.)
Signing documents with visual signatures instead of cryptographic ones is already extremely archaic, but having to make them look like being signed by hand is absurdly so.
> For bureaucratic reasons, a colleague of mine had to print, sign, scan and send by email a high number of pages. To save trees, ink, time, and to stick it to the bureaucrats, I wrote this script
This would be helpful in that case.
Yes, it is an odd combination of legacy (sometimes regulatory) requirements and modern technology, but there are numerous situations where only wet ink signatures are accepted, and “digital signatures” are not accepted—even though the document is stored in a digital format.
Wet ink signatures are most commonly required in finance / investment / banking transactions. They are sometimes required for B2B transactions. While not as common in the US as in other countries, you can also run into requirements where documents must be signed via wet ink signature under seal (or stamp). Scanning a document with a signature line that has been embossed with a company seal looks somewhat comical and arguably legible (especially if the scan is done with a feed-through scanner) but is required to get business done sometimes.
First comment posts a way to achieve something similar with imagemagick, which I've been using flawlessly since.
There are so may options, e.g.:
> convert -density "${DENSITY}" "${PAGE_IN}" -linear-stretch 3.5%x10% -blur 0x0.5 -attenuate 0.25 -rotate "${ROTATION}" +noise Gaussian "${TMPDIR}/${PAGE_BN}-scanned.pdf"
Anyway, businesses still like to do it this way ("Signing" pdf by applying some pixels). I wonder if it is just an inconvenience to overcome both for businesses and consumers that just write this off and don't bother that it is such a weak binding. It is like some dirty workaround/hack to put those silly signatures on digital documents to get stuff done.
But yes, anything that's not a proper digital signature might as well just be a random png pasted into a pdf. No legal binding power whatsoever.
Yet Ford repeatedly insisted I print out the documents, sign them, and scan them. I tried a digital signature anyway - and they called me out on it.
Do you mean:
A) a cryptographic signature?
B) an image of your handwritten signature?
C) something else?
I think you and GP might be talking about different things.
I’ve had many instances where people insist I print, sign, scan, rather than e-sign.
I too have put an image of my signature on the pdf rather than printing; I have had those both rejected and accepted.
I don’t have a printer and have been annoyed by this insistence greatly. Enough that seeing this post filled me with glee.
edit: I see that I misinterpreted the parent comment. Sorry.
You could theoretically, in some cases, run a business on nothing but verbal contracts, but you would be foolish to do so because you’d have difficulty proving anything if it were disputed.
You just get away with it because the contract wasn’t binding so there was no fraud, right?
I bet those “non-binding” contracts are actually much more binding than you might think.
So within the EU a scanned document is valid though the law does say the method used needs to be proportional to whats at stake.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS
Another cool thing, the whole document itself does have a hash where you can go to the website of the ministry of justice and input the hash to verify the document. It was unexpectedly neat.
In the US from what I read[1] the situation is pretty much the same a scan of a signed document is binding as well as non cryptographic electronic signatures.
[1] https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/legality-electr...
More seriously, do let us know what you find. I've heard both sides on this but the "verbal agreement is also binding (just gl proving it)" side is usually from better sources like an actual lawyer posting on a forum as opposed to a random boss making claims about signature requirements, for example.
Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters. It's just what I think I know, but I may very well be wrong :)
What I read is that even informational documents are considered in court. However document that bears legal validity, must contain: document name, date, signature (with exceptions) and recipient.
However I did found a relevant quote:
> Section 5. > (1) A document shall be signed in one's own hand. A document of the organization shall be signed by the person whose position is indicated in the document. A personal signature reproduced in a paper document using technical means shall not ensure legal force of the document.
https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/210205-law-on-legal-force-of-d...
But I'm not sure if print->sign->scan qualifies, as the signature itself isn't put there with technical means. But this rules out putting image as a signature on PDF.
This is not talking about e-documents. E-document states that it must be signed with secure electronic signature.
I know Latvian people are reading this too and this document is very helpful in that regard: https://www.tm.gov.lv/lv/media/7605/download
> Yeah, you're right. Please do not take me as an authority or lawyer on that matters.
Sorry I phrased my previous reply badly. What I meant is generally the two camps on this, that typically one of them seems to speak from a more knowledgeable position/perspective than the other. I did not mean to suggest that you are not knowledgeable!
Generally speaking in most countries the civil law does not specify how the contract is supposed to be made. You can buy from the shop with just a nod of your head. Only some specific agreements have to be written down (and even fewer made in front of the notary).
Would a business agreement concluded over email not be binding? Can you get away with fraud by just tricking people into agreeing to use docusign?
If (not cryptographically) esigned contracts are not binding in your country, how does that not cripple law enforcements ability to combat fraud involving such contracts?
If I sell you a car and we use a contract like this, do I then get to keep both the car and the money? If not, how is that contract not binding?
It's a pain, but it's still less annoying than dealing with a printer.
Because Preview lets you draw the signature using the TrackPad and a finger, I've had no difficulty making a very convincing replica of my actual signature in Preview.
While the linked tool may "look" more convincing with fake photocopy marks etc, for just signatures its not been necessary to go beyond Preview for me ever. In the US so much business is conducted on paperfree platforms like DocuSign etc that I don't think many people even notice the fact the signature is digital anymore, given platforms like DocuSign do more or less the same thing.
In Preview I copied one eye and put it over my troubled eye, reversed. It worked.
I’ve been though face detection systems in various countries (US, UK, France) and I seem to get through ok.
Granted, no one is going CSI on anything I sign. I should probably just make like ten pngs of my signature and paste those in.
Combined with notes.app which has some very nice features (document scan, share, to-do lists, reliable sync, adding of files, search etc) it is Apple at its best.
I figure even if they do complain, it doesn't matter. Its not like I don't have permission to do what I want with my own signature. The worst might be that they come back and say "sign it properly please" and then I have to go through the effort of printing it out and scanning it back in.
They were for a 401(k) plan I was updating RMD choices. I got the PDF form from their site, filled it out in Preview, pasted my signature PNG, and used an app on my phone to fax it(!) to their number.
Got rejected. Had to actually print the damn things and sign them with a pen, scan them again with my phone’s camera, and re-fax them.
Was mildly infuriating.
But yes, dealing with brokerage forms that needed a wet signature faxed..
When I refaxed the forms, I just removed the PNG signatures from the PDFs first (leaving all other form fields typed in), printed them, signed them, made sure the two signatures were different in obvious ways (but still the "same"!), and scanned them at deliberately low resolution.
This program sounds like it automates all those steps.
They're ridiculous with this. It's a huge pain with trusts.
For Latex documents, but same concept and a fun little add on.
This product looks interesting, although the idea of me entering coordinates for the stamp instead of just stamping it in a GUI is not at all appealing...
So what I'd do was take the PDF, paste in my wife's signature, print it out, sign it myself, then fax it over. Never had any problems.
https://www.scanyourpdf.com/
EDIT: Clicking on it, I see the source code is available. If I can run it on my local box then this might be a little less nasty than mucking with the `convert` command.
Github repo: https://github.com/baicunko/scanyourpdf
But yeah, the security implications of uploading a PDF with your SSN and signature to a random website is, um, not good.
Used to use Photoshop where I just made my signature a custom brush.
Disclaimer: I work for Figma.
https://www.handy-signatur.at/hs2/#!sign/single
When I tried sending such a document to a German insurance company, they refused to accept it. I ended up faxing the document :/
> Gemäß Artikel 25 eIDAS-Verordnung hat eine qualifizierte elektronische Signatur die gleiche Rechtswirkung wie eine handschriftliche Unterschriftund wird in allen Mitgliedstaaten anerkannt.
Doesn't work always, but the times it doesn't I usually find a competitor that does prove to be more cooperative pretty easily!
Create an array of signatures on paper.
Use photoshop to make it transparent.
Take transparent images of signatures and make pdf stamps out of them.
Use pdf stamp to sign docs.
Print pdf with stamp markups as image to pdf printer.