Schneier Asks Why We Accept Fax Signatures

Bruce Schneier's latest commentary looks into one of my pet peeves: faxed signature requirements. He writes "Aren't fax signatures the weirdest thing? It's trivial to cut and paste -- with real scissors and glue -- anyone's signature onto a document so that it'll look real when faxed. There is so little security in fax signatures that it's mind-boggling that anyone accepts them. Yet people do, all the time. I've signed book contracts, credit card authorizations, nondisclosure..." It's amazing how organizations are sometimes willing to accept low-quality, unverified scans delivered over POTS as authoritative, when they won't take the same information in a high-resolution scan delivered over (relatively secure) email.

Dilbert already covered this.

[rdmiller3]

Scott Adams already covered this in "Dilbert".

The accounting trolls told Dilbert that they wouldn't accept copies of his expenses... but he could FAX them.

What to do if someone asks you to fax a signature

[Alzheimers]

Get three pieces of black construction paper and a roll of scotch tape.

Tape them together top to bottom, creating one long sheet. On the bottom, place a piece of tape half over the edge.

Insert the long sheet into the fax machine, and dial the number. As it begins to feed through, quickly affix the top to the bottom sheet, creating a long loop.

Go get a cup of coffee.

That's not the worst of it!

[youthoftoday]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJkx_oD63KM [youtube.com]

Was just kidding

[archeopterix]

Bruce Schneier here. Disregard what I said about faxed signatures. They are perfectly OK.
Here's my OCR-ed signature: Bruce Schneier

Re:CC Signature Pranks

[vertinox]

I wrote "See License" on the back of my credit card. I'm still amazed by the number of vendors who don't look, so I make sure to thank the ones that do, and chide the ones that don't.

Actually, Zug.com has an interesting tale of the author trying to see how much he could get away with when he signed credit card purchases. He even did musical notation once. Very funny.

http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/ [zug.com]
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/ [zug.com]

Re:Should have stop at, Aren't FAXes the weirdest

[gnick]

We had one vendor who refused to accept a signature on a scanned and e-mailed document - They insisted that it be faxed. We even pointed out that we were just going to print out the scanned document and drop it in the fax machine because the physical document had already been handed off to somebody else and we suggested that they just print it themselves. They still wanted the fax, so we printed and faxed the document we'd already delivered and that satisfied them. Bizarre.

Re:It's an "older" technology

[Anonymous Coward]

And I just sent my first fax a few days ago. Clearly it is the more modern technology!

Re:It's an "older" technology

[Anonymous Coward]

TECHNICALLY, the "fax machine" was invented in the 19th century. It became WIDELY used in the 1970s. While the first EMAIL may have been keyed in 1965, it could HARDLY have been considered to have been in WIDE use.

So, YES, the fax machine is OLDER. Much older.

There's something wrong with your caps lock key. Every eight or ten words it activates itself and then gets stuck until you hit the space bar again.

Re:We haven't had faxes for 20 years

[hostyle]

Longboats!

Re:A watermelon, eh?

[Stooshie]

By the way, the plural of "melon" is "mellon", not "melons".

Not quite true.

• 1 melon
• 2 mellon
• 3 melllon
• 4 mellllon
• ...
• 1,000 mel^3on
• 1,000,000 melion
• 1,000,000,000 belion
• That's enough[ed.]

Re:Should have stop at, Aren't FAXes the weirdest

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. So I can copy some money and it's equivalent?

Re:A watermelon, eh?

[AvitarX]

I thought it was:
4 melvon
5 mevon

Re:Should have stop at, Aren't FAXes the weirdest

[angus_rg]

This can even happen orally.

I love when it happens orally.

Re:What to do if someone asks you to fax a signatu

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a half twist, forming a Moebuis strip, which can then cause a rip in the space time continuum at the receiver's end.

Of course, you'll need to get a Klein bottle of coffee (which has its own problems)

Re:They do accept scanned signatures

[Jay L]

This reminds me of a story from my youth...so we... scanned...

You have no idea how depressing this is.