On 07/04/2010, at 2:25 AM, Macs R We wrote: > > On Apr 6, 2010, at 9:10 AM, Ashley Aitken wrote: > >> However, I recognise the folly of this (and I guess you do as well). My >> hope is that when enough people recognise this folly we will move to >> something more secure (like PKI). > > If you have full PDF tools you can create an actual digital signature field. > The appearance of the field LOOKS like your graphic signature, but the > contents are similar to a PGP-style signature.
Yes, I am aware of that (well not how it looks because I haven't used digital signatures with PDFs). I was just looking today for somewhere to buy a good personal certificate (name, physical address and email address for example, not just email address) and on both Verisign and Thawte I couldn't find any thing resembling that. It needs to be one of the big CAs that have their certificates distributed with the major operating systems. >>> You can just as easily scan the real signature and paste it on things you >>> want that person to sign. So Steve is right. >> >> Ok, I agree and I see what you (and Steve I assume Steve) mean now. >> >> I was trying to compare the security of a scanned signature with that of a >> real signature. > > What's "real" mean? I was talking about pen on paper (what does "real" mean these days? :-). > I have been using the same scanned "graphic" signature on computer-generated > documents for 20 years. In fact, since an expert could tell they were > identical, I suspect I would be able to make a good mitigating case should it > be stolen and misused on some strange document. But how would you prove that someone stole it? > And I'm a guy who has never done anything more than scribble illiterately > into credit card machines just to go through the motions for cashiers. Yes, it would seem there's folly in that process as well, unless they measure the velocity of the writing as well (I suspect not though). Cheers, Ashley. -- Ashley Aitken Perth, Western Australia Skype/iChat: MrHatken (GMT + 8hrs!) _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
