Sign your name across my heart
May. 3rd, 2005 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaToday's post brought me a new debit card, which means I have finally entered the world of chip and PINnery. This evening, on my way out to rapper practice I bought some petrol, ceremonially typing my PIN in for the first time.
Chip and PIN seems to have become very widespread very quickly, and I don't doubt that soon it'll only be tiny little backwater shops which don't have the kit to do it.
Security considerations aside, I don't like it. I'm not referring to worries that someone will capture my PIN, and spend all my money. It's just that at that irrational, stomachy level where I'm allowed to behave like a three-year-old I don't like it.
The provision of a four digit code is very impersonal. It could be anyone typing in that number - even another machine. Although my PIN might be just as secure (or more so) than my signature, my signature was mine. And, within reason, I'm the only one who can provide my signature.
Tapping in a code seems transient and insubstantial. Formerly, whenever I've bought petrol there has been a little piece of paper left as evidece, a receipt with my name staring blackly back at me, giving solidity to the transaction. I was vaguely surprised to find that typing in my PIN worked tonight - although I'm aware of the technology involved, somehow I didn't seem to have done quite enough to have given away thiry quid.
I rather like my signature, which is large and flamboyant and, according to amateur graphology in something like Cosmo once, indicative of generosity and optimism. When I signed my new debit card this evening, my signature ran off the top of the little white strip as it always does. Unusually, for someone older than around twenty, my signature is legible as my name; it has not devolved into a series of stylised squiggles. It only looks the same each time by virtue of long practice, of being required to write it repeatedly on forms, of having to scribble it quickly when I pause to buy something and am running late.
Some time ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jezzidue took me to task for this. It was not a signature, he said, just me writing my name with a flourish, and as such was easily copiable. I accepted the challenge, and ten minutes later could produce a much more convincing (to the untrained eye) version of his pile-o'-squiggles than he could of my handwritten name.
It saddens me to think that my signature will now have fewer outings than it used to. For the time being, at least, it will still be required on official forms, personal cheques and as an informal endorsement that I've agreed to something. But cheques are fast going the way of the big lizardy things, and I wonder whether some PGP-variant will soon be stepping in to ensure that everyday forms filled in online can be authenticated. Already, via internet banking, I can do things which would otherwise require a signature just by typing in my password.
I might start keeping a count, over the coming months, of just how often I'm required to put pen to paper when providing my consent to something. I fear it won't be as often as once a week. I wonder how long it'll be before there is a generation of people who don't have (or need to have) a consistent and recognisable signature.
Chip and PIN seems to have become very widespread very quickly, and I don't doubt that soon it'll only be tiny little backwater shops which don't have the kit to do it.
Security considerations aside, I don't like it. I'm not referring to worries that someone will capture my PIN, and spend all my money. It's just that at that irrational, stomachy level where I'm allowed to behave like a three-year-old I don't like it.
The provision of a four digit code is very impersonal. It could be anyone typing in that number - even another machine. Although my PIN might be just as secure (or more so) than my signature, my signature was mine. And, within reason, I'm the only one who can provide my signature.
Tapping in a code seems transient and insubstantial. Formerly, whenever I've bought petrol there has been a little piece of paper left as evidece, a receipt with my name staring blackly back at me, giving solidity to the transaction. I was vaguely surprised to find that typing in my PIN worked tonight - although I'm aware of the technology involved, somehow I didn't seem to have done quite enough to have given away thiry quid.
I rather like my signature, which is large and flamboyant and, according to amateur graphology in something like Cosmo once, indicative of generosity and optimism. When I signed my new debit card this evening, my signature ran off the top of the little white strip as it always does. Unusually, for someone older than around twenty, my signature is legible as my name; it has not devolved into a series of stylised squiggles. It only looks the same each time by virtue of long practice, of being required to write it repeatedly on forms, of having to scribble it quickly when I pause to buy something and am running late.
Some time ago,
jezzidue took me to task for this. It was not a signature, he said, just me writing my name with a flourish, and as such was easily copiable. I accepted the challenge, and ten minutes later could produce a much more convincing (to the untrained eye) version of his pile-o'-squiggles than he could of my handwritten name. It saddens me to think that my signature will now have fewer outings than it used to. For the time being, at least, it will still be required on official forms, personal cheques and as an informal endorsement that I've agreed to something. But cheques are fast going the way of the big lizardy things, and I wonder whether some PGP-variant will soon be stepping in to ensure that everyday forms filled in online can be authenticated. Already, via internet banking, I can do things which would otherwise require a signature just by typing in my password.
I might start keeping a count, over the coming months, of just how often I'm required to put pen to paper when providing my consent to something. I fear it won't be as often as once a week. I wonder how long it'll be before there is a generation of people who don't have (or need to have) a consistent and recognisable signature.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 02:17 pm (UTC)Working in shops later, we never really had any guidance on how to detect fake signatures in the slightest and I know from some people that if there's a rush on, there isn't really time to check properly. For this reason I have to agree with the keypad option as being safer in the long-run, although it is rather depersonalised and just as easy to take for granted as thesecurity system.
If you like signing things, I could suggest that you:
a) come to Germany, where you pretty much have to carry round ID all of the time against which your signature can be checked on account of how you have to sign for everything (except for card transactions)
b) become a celebrity and have to sign autographs wherever you go