Sign your name across my heart

[venta]

Today'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, 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.

Comments

[inskauldrak.livejournal.com]

I understand the feeling, though at the same time my new C&P card came at the point I was deciding that I *really* needed a new card due to the signature and paper line fading.

My signature doesn't really have much of a flourish, but it is nice to put down a scrawl that can be described by people who work in the NHS as 'worse handwriting than any Doctor's I've ever seen' ; )

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

Chip and PIN seems to have become very widespread very quickly

The card companies were very good at telling merchants about the liability shift that occurred on 1st January 2005; after that date, if a fraudulant transaction was made with a card that is chip and PIN capable, but the merchant's equipment wasn't chip and PIN capable or the merchant chose to accept a signature, the merchant loses the money. (Before that date, the merchant may have been able to keep the money as long as it could demonstrate that it checked the signature and performed the various other due-diligence checks in the manual.)

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have to disagree: as someone who's spent years trying to eliminate the need to write from his life, having to scrawl my own name on bits of paper every time I want to buy something has long been one of the last unassailable bastions of graphological discontent.

Fundamentally, however impersonal Chip and PIN may be, I despise writing. Typing is fine, drawing I actively enjoy, but hand-writing is painfully slow (7wpm when I was at university had to do it regularly. Compare to my typing speed in excess of 60wpm) and painfully painful (it makes my wrist ache).

If I never have to pick up a pen again it'll be too soon.

[fluffymark]

Buying anything over the internet requires exactly the same info on the card but without even needing the PIN. How do you feel about buying things online? Also, many ticket machines (tube ticket machines for certain) don't need a PIN either. Just put the card in and it takes your money. Doesn't even ask to confirm the transaction. Would you use those?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I had a certain amount of difficulty as guinea-pig for the new Brookes electronic job application system: the electronic documents to be filled in are the Word documents which are normally printed and filled in by hand. As such, there's still a space on them for "Signature".

I think, in the short term, when they come for interview, applicants are going to be given a hard copy of their application form, and asked to sign it on the spot (this may only be for the successful applicant). The sooner somebody wakes up to the need for digital signatures, and how we explain this to the applicants, the better.

[diffrentcolours]

C+P has advantages and disadvantages over signatures, from a technical and security POV. I've wibbled about them on my LJ before, but it's too late to go trawling for links.

Personally, I'm annoyed that when they went to all the hassle of introducing C+P they didn't start printing photographs on the card as well - this measure is common in Europe and is a fantastic extra defence against fraud.

However, in future you can expect to see C+P readers in more non-shop devices - imagine a TV set-top box that lets you pay for pay-per-view movies by sticking in your card, for instance.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Hmm - I was never comfortable while living in the UK that you didn't need to use your PIN for eftpos transactions. Hardly anyone working in retail ever checks signatures, and I'd been used to using my PIN at supermarkets from living in Australia. (they only got C+P quite recently, but required PINs from when eftpos was first introduced over ten years ago)

[triskellian]

I don't like it either, and also because I mourn the loss of my signature. I loved my old signature (spent ages designing it, back when I was fifteen or so ;-), and I could potentially be fond of my new signature, except that I haven't yet had a chance to settle into it, because I got new cards when I changed my name, and guess what? They were chip&pin cards. No new signature practice for me :-(

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I don't like it either, for three reasons: (a) the aesthetic one you talk about -- my signature may not be a thing of great beauty, but it's mine, dammit; (b) I now have to remember a load more PINs than I used to (as I only use one card for getting cash out of machines, but I pay for things in shops etc with four different cards); and (c) it seems rather sneakily evil to me that they've taken the opportunity to shift the liability burden onto the consumer, with no real excuse for doing so.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

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.

Further to this: Angry Dave used to work in an Argos from time to time. They paid a bounty to employees who spotted a fake signature. According to him, this amounted to a very worthwhile bonus for him (he caught quite a few) but no other employee ever spotted a single one.

Meanwhile, back on topic: I don't like chip and pin much either, but in actual fact I never use it for anything except buying food anyway. Buying petrol for my car just involves swiping the card at the pump (for which one does not require pin entry). Non-food shopping involves typing my card number in to web pages. As such, all it's achieving is to prove to Mr Tesco that I'm not stealing £10 worth of assorted bread, pasta and nappies a couple of times a week.

(Re-reading the above paragraph I've just realised it implies I eat nappies. This is not, in fact, the case.)

[(Anonymous)]

Anyone who thinks there is "no inherent problem" with C&P has never stood in the local post office on a Thursday morning and watched the pensioners fail to remember/fish out piece of paper with PIN written on/look almost tearfully back to the days of pension books.

[marjory.livejournal.com]

I do know what you mean about signatures. As an adolescent, some of us would sit in the classroom at breaktimes and practice our signatures, the wackiest being, naturally, the best to the eyes of gauche 13 year-olds. Signatures meant being grown up, having an identity of your own, being important enough to be required to sign something. I recall being especially pleased to discover that my bank offered a cashcard at 14 and then a chequebook. Not that I had any money, mind, but I liked the possibility of sending away for things which I wanted and finance being my business. It afforded me a bit more independence than the usual discussion which would ensue if I handed over my 5 quid in cash to a parent-with-chequebook who would then want to know why on earth I wanted to waste money on some crap record, tourbook, fanclub membership etc. This was back when money meant fun. The nice magic-signature Switchcard which I received as a student (also backed by no money, but what-the-heck) is also redolent of rites of passage and hopes for the future, a kind of plutographic version of the Keys to the Kingdom of the adult world.

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