Bruce Schneier asks and answers the question. ... Here's another one for which I have no answer: When's the last time you received an important fax? I literally cannot remember, but presume it was about two years ago when I was buying a house.
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Realtors are the only ones
I recently went through the house-buying process and truly believe that those involved in real estate are the only ones that still use a fax machine.
fax signatures
Many companies use and accept faxed signatures, good idea or not. I think the biggest problem is that they just don't understand the technology or the legal aspects.
Just yesterday I scanned in a document with my signature and attached it to an email as a pdf, and sent it off to a sales manager. (Thinking that not only was I saving time, but the cost of a long distance phone charge.) In just a few minutes her secretary called and asked if I could fax them the original. Of course I said, no. I could not fax the original but I could mail or FedEx it. This totally went over her head. She wanted to know why I could email the original but not fax it. So I told her that attachment in the email was a scanned copy of the document. She said they couldn't accept a copy, scanned or otherwise. She then ask me again to fas the original.
Then I asked why they would accept a fax and not an email. She told me that email was not secure so their policy was not to accept signatures on emailed documents.
I tried to explain that the fax was no more original than the scan but got nowhere. So in the end I gave up and faxed the "original".
It's no wonder this country is in the shape it is.
Heres the real question
Why are any signatures accepted?
Any idiot with half a brain can forge a signature. And the people who accept these signatures don't bother to check, or don't have any way to verify that the person signing is who he says he is.
I sign random names on everything and no one cares.
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