The Signature.
Yup, that’s it. It’s the worst security implement that mankind has ever invented. Worse than the secret handshake, worse than the ‘mother’s maiden name’, and worse than the easily picked old-school locks.
I’ve always thought this – but what finally pushed me over the edge was when I was at the bank today. I deposited one check. I put the check amount on the deposit slip, but forgot to put it in the ‘total’ at the bottom. So the teller filled it in and handed the slip back to me to initial. I thought to myself “initialing here does absolutely jack squat”. I obliged, of course. After all, I do want the money to find its way into my account.
But let’s go back to the idea in general. In technology, consumers want “perfect” security. They want a computer that’s “hacker proof, virus proof, and worm proof”. I know people who won’t purchase anything on sites like Amazon.com for fear of identity theft -”you never know who’s going to take your credit card number, boy… once it’s out there…it’s out there”. Yet, these same people use their credit card at a grocery store and are comfortable with the notion that their signature guarantees it was was a legitimate purchase. What’s even worse than real signatures are the signatures on those digital pads – they all look like absolute chicken scratch. What good does that really do, aside from meet some legal demand somewhere?
Yes, I’ve heard “well, ‘they’ can do handwriting analysis to see if it was really you”. I’m sure ‘they’ can, but how often will things go that far? What if it was a rubber-stamped or digital signature? What if it was legitimately me, but I had [accidentally] slammed my hand in the car door before coming into the store?
But signatures are not limited to bank deposit slips and credit card purchases. We use them every where, in all sorts of really important documents. How, in our modern world, is this still acceptable? In some cases, we need something better. In other cases – can we just forgo the whole thing all together?
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