Ask HK: Are hand written signatures meaningless?

I think it's a ritual meant to convey that you intend to enter into a legally binding arrangement with someone, one of the requirements of a contract (eg, to establish that you aren't joking or being figurative about your agreement). I think the possibility of forensically analyzing it to prove your identity is secondary, if it's a consideration at all. Indeed, I've "signed" documents digitally where the software used a "signature" that was just a font, totally divorced from my handwriting & of no forensic value.

While you may be right to some extent, signature bears some information like stroke patterns, pen-holding and such, which are usually distinctively personal.

Combine a few of these, and multiple of your signatures could probably be easily matched and verified even by a half-expert :)

But as highlighted by other poster (maxbond): it's a commitment, and as long as you are not willing to challenge it, any of your signatures is sufficient to indicate intent.

Handwritten signatures are easy to forge. At this point, they are used mostly for cultural and historical reasons. They will be gradually replaced with digital signatures, once legal support is provided.

There are already companies that do that.

The bank we use for our business in Germany (Sparkasse) requires that we have our signatures on file with them. When we sign documents they check these signatures (most things seem to require us physically signing and mailing a letter to the bank).

As others said it’s more of a legal step than actual security.

In the European country I live in, I have a verified digital ID, and I can use it to sign documents, verify credit card transactions and login to fill in forms for government services, effectively signing them too.

It’s nice but in practice the digital. Any small company or individual will use a signed document instead. It’s just easier and doesn’t cost money to implement.

Plus anything that actually verifies your identity probably means each signature/transaction is in a system owned by a government and operated by a vendor. It’s not trivial to convince all citizens in a country to start using something like that.

I don't think the signature is meant to verify that you are you.. Just like locks are not really to keep out thieves.

Signatures and locks are thresholds..

You knowingly, intently, explicitly and provable overstepping that threshold when you fake a signature or break circumvent a lock. That's the real value they provide.

The threshold raises the bar a little bit, it makes it require a bit more determination and activation energy, so it reduces the pool of potential criminals.

In essence a signature is all about intent. An X can be your signature or any type of mark. What matters is that you are marking your intention to enter an agreement.

You can ask your friend to sign your name for you. That is 100% your legally binding signature even though they drew it because of your intent.

Obama signed bills into law remotely using an auto pen while he was in Europe. That is 100% his signature because of intent. The DOJ wrote a compressive piece on this that goes into signatures in general much deeper: https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/whether-president-may-si...

While we are talking about signatures, it's relevant to raise elections. In Washington State we've had vote-by-mail for decades, and up until recently under the management of Republican secretaries of state (IE: bipartisan support).

In eastern Washington, counties are suppressing voters by discarding votes that they claim do not have a match to the signature card. The majority of these discarded votes are from Hispanic / latino voter (who in themselves are not a majority of the population). Before anyone objects - all studies on vote by mail have shown incredibly low rates of fraud - it's just not an issue. Likewise - ask a Washington voter when the last time they updated their signature card and they are likely to laugh - it's something you do when you register to vote and you forget about for decades. So yes, signatures really do matter as in our case it is absolutely being used to suppress voters.

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As a real estate agent, 99.999% of the signatures I deal with are digital. You can complete every signature in buying a home digitally, depending on payment method - ironically the banks still want real ink, but if you pay cash you can go digital. This is the only thing stopping the entire process from also happening in an entirely remote / online fashion.

First, You could fix this, You may even got some benefits, for example, Jobs learned calligraphy and used it in design of Apple computers.

Now handwriting is sign of very respectful person, successful and smart, so have spare time to learn art.

Also, it is just good for mind, because hands connected directly to neocortex, and when practice handwriting, You activate Your brain.

Second, handwriting is extremely individual, modern tech could measure strokes and this could be used as biometry, to prove authenticity. Even clone will have different pattern of strokes.

In my country (India), there are quite a few people who are illiterate and cannot affix signature using pen on paper. The law allows them to affix a thumbprint.

A physical signature (or thumbprint) is a proof of intent. It can be witnessed. Some government documents require notarization (i.e., witnessed by a Notary public and signed/sealed) to lend the weight of genuinity.

As an aside, it is a bit of an irony that even literate folks today have to use their thumbprint to unlock their iPhone or Android cellphones :) So, it has come full circle.