The other day a friend had me write a reference letter about their
dogs, for a new landlord. They wanted paper. So I wrote the letter in Word, pasted in a signature scan, and made a
PDF. I then e-mailed the PDF to them and let them printed out. Easy.
It took five minutes. But why wouldn’t an email I’ve been good enough for this purpose? I
could write an email to the landlord and say “Blah blah blah. Please
call me if you question.” Email feels too easy to spoof and because email works across the many
different platforms it’s hard to embed rich stuff inside it for
signatures. I send emails from a phone, from a web browser, sometimes
from somebody else’s computer. And email is fundamentally plaintext
and attachments. But my pasted in scan plus PDF solution isn’t very secure either. That
scan of my signature is something I reuse all the time. And that PDF
letter is something very easy to doctor up. So here’s a solution, thanks to cameras and audio on phones and laptops: Create and A/V signature print unique to each document. Recorded in
line with the email or webpage or document and attach it either as a
link or as a signature file. Have a cloud-based service which
recognizes your voice and guarantees match. I say Amol Sarva, this
recording system has Amol Sarva, and the cloud-based service
guarantees the match. Having used that Adobe purchased authentication service, I think there
is much room for improvement.
dogs, for a new landlord. They wanted paper. So I wrote the letter in Word, pasted in a signature scan, and made a
PDF. I then e-mailed the PDF to them and let them printed out. Easy.
It took five minutes. But why wouldn’t an email I’ve been good enough for this purpose? I
could write an email to the landlord and say “Blah blah blah. Please
call me if you question.” Email feels too easy to spoof and because email works across the many
different platforms it’s hard to embed rich stuff inside it for
signatures. I send emails from a phone, from a web browser, sometimes
from somebody else’s computer. And email is fundamentally plaintext
and attachments. But my pasted in scan plus PDF solution isn’t very secure either. That
scan of my signature is something I reuse all the time. And that PDF
letter is something very easy to doctor up. So here’s a solution, thanks to cameras and audio on phones and laptops: Create and A/V signature print unique to each document. Recorded in
line with the email or webpage or document and attach it either as a
link or as a signature file. Have a cloud-based service which
recognizes your voice and guarantees match. I say Amol Sarva, this
recording system has Amol Sarva, and the cloud-based service
guarantees the match. Having used that Adobe purchased authentication service, I think there
is much room for improvement.