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Credit card signatures: Useless?
SpaceAdmiral writes "Everyone should remember John Hargrave's classic Credit Card Prank on Zug. He tried signing fake names on his credit card receipt, and no one seemed to care.
But that's nothing compared to The Credit Card Prank, Part 2. Can he draw obscene pictures instead of signing his credit card? Yes, it turns out. Is there any way of getting your signature checked? . . . Yes, it turns out. But you have to do an awful lot."
A story I heard once somewhere on the web:
"I once went to Target to buy a CD and used my new credit card to pay. After signing the receipt the cashier took my card and looked at the back and said "You haven't signed the back of your credit card.", I took my credit card back and signed the back of it and gave it back to her. She then proceeded to compare the back of my just signed credit card with the signature I had also just made on the receipt and said "Yep, they match". I just shook my head, took my stuff and left."
Actually, despite my experience in the past with this kind of sillyness, I have noticed a lot more cashiers taking more care to make sure that the signature really matches. Just yesterday I went to Half Price Books and thought that the cashier was going to breakout a magnifying glass to ensure that the signature was authentic.
this comes in handy when I've had a "little" to much to drink at a bar or club. It's nice to know that my friends can sign for me.
One of the first things you notice when on holiday in the US (buying petrol, stuff, whatever) is that they don't look at your credit card signature. Ever.
In the UK (and I think most of Europe) it's a lot different. I've been asked to re-sign because my (legitimate!) signature wasn't quite similar enough. It doesn't help when you've got a 3-year-old card where the signature is pretty much worn-off anyway
Another weird thing about the US is that pretty much the entire world wants to know your social-security number. The only person in the UK who ever asks for my SSN is the taxman, and I want him to know, so I don't get two tax-bills
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
While I realize that this "article" was meant to be tongue in cheek, I'll say:
Every time you make a credit card purchase, they're supposed to match your signature against the one on the back of your card. Nobody seems to check anymore, so I tried to see how far I could push it with wacky signatures like "Mariah Carey" and "Zeus," which you can read in the original Credit Card Prank.
My signature is basically a W with a line after. I have been told it's "unique". I always reply, "it's fast." Signatures required for credit card purchases are lame. Checking my ID is even worse. I always make sure to be a PITA when they ask for my ID when I pay w/a CC. Paying with plastic is my way around hassle and if they're going to give me one I'm sure to pay them back with some.
I was grocery shopping when I ran into a new type of signature-checking device: the electronic screen. Instead of a flimsy scrap of paper, you now sign your name right into the screen. Finally, I thought, a better way to check our signatures!
For these I usually just put an X through it or a straight line. I always believed that an X was a valid signature. What happens if I'm truly unable to write my signature? I have to sign in that box in order for the signature to take so I do. I've never had a problem with someone questioning it (most are 16 year old kids that just don't give a shit).
Going back to my ID issues w/CC's. My ID has a signature on it (for what reason I have no idea) but in order to get that signature on there you have to be writing for a certain amount of time. I had to write out my entire name (including middle name) in order for it to take. It basically means that the signature on my ID is worthless as I never sign anything like that. Why bother to require it if you aren't going to get a valid signature from me?
If we are basing the validation of the signature to the back of a possibly stolen card don't you think that someone would attempt to at least forge the signature? I would think that would be the case.
The world is ending if people seriously believe that a handwritten signature on the back of a credit card will end theft. Maybe we should all be required to have our signature stored in a national database. That surely will stop the terrorists!
So to answer the question posed in the article title: "Credit card signatures: useless?" I have to answer, completely.
.. a guy I used to work with that signed all his credit card receipts and checks "I. M. Jesus Christ"
nobody ever though twice about it.
Starbucks doesn't bother to ask for a PIN or signature under $20: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2004/08/18 /swipe_hype_debit_the_small_stuff/
John.
When I lived in Australia, a woman at Commonwealth Bank told me that I could not write "Check Identification" on the back of the card with my signature. I insisted that my signature was there, but I still wanted someoene to check the id of the card holder. She was adamant about it. I asked for her manager who was also adamant. Why were they? Because there was no rule or code of conduct which said it "IS OK" to do this. So thereby it must not be done.
I could sign my card Micky Mouse and it would still be accepted.
My other half changed her signature so it was in hini rather than english character set, and they still accepted it when she did the english one without any questions.
They are pointless.
Anyway customers get arsey when you question them about the signature anyway so you lose either way.
These days, I just draw a line across the receipt. Nobody really seems to care. My latest thing has been so see just how short I can make the line.
literally. I just put a line through. That's my signature.
Signatures are pretty easy to forge... especially to an untrained eye.
So I keep my "real signature" for important stuff. Some waiter doesn't need my signature. They charge regardless.
I'm asked all the time to show my ID by various cashiers when I use my credit card in a store and it's a bit annoying.
Since the U.S. federal government limits my liability to $50 for someone fraudulently using my credit card, and all of my credit card companies waive even that, I don't care who uses my credit card.
I just had to have one credit card replaced because someone attempted to charge $9,000 worth of "computer equipment" to it while I was on vacation. It was actually the third incident of someone putting fraudulent charges on that card. The funny thing is that even my credit card company didn't care - it was I that insisted on getting new numbers on the card. Which explains why more and more vendors are asking for ID or checking signatures - they're the ones that lose money when fraud happens.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Something i learned while working in retail is write "check id" in the signature block...not everyone checks, but i usually get at least 60% of the people ask me for id...so it would at least slow down someone having a spending spree with my card.
I used to work in the box office at a performing arts center. We took credit card orders all the time, and all of us knew that we had to double-check the signatures. I remember more than one patron being very indignant when I refused to accept a card with "See ID" (or "CID") on the back, or worse yet, no signature at all.
"Can I just sign the card now?"
"I'm sorry, but I have no way of verifying your signature then."
"But nobody else ever cares!"
"I'm afraid that we do."
It's times like that that a boss who backs you up is a very, very helpful thing. (We would still take a different, and signed, credit card from them. We weren't total jerks!)
I would say 9 out of 10 purchases don't even check the back, my signature or my ID. The other 1 out of 10, may look at the back, then notice that there is no signature and give it back to me, with receipt and all. No one even cares anymore. It's like we are doing them a waste of time if they have to ask to check ID / signature.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
At my local starkbutts, I bought a pound of coffee and waited for the pen. and after an awkward pause, was told by the cashier that no signature was required any longer for purchases under $25...she was not even going to give me anything to sign.
I did not feel comforted by that...my stolen wallets have always been used to by gas because of the no-signature-pay-at-the-pump option. anyone else encountered this?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
It sort of works. I pull out the card and my ID, and about half the time they ask to see both.
UK has all switched over to the chip and pin system now so no signature required, even better, of course its extremely easy now to just watch everyone enter their pins so if u get that its straight to the cash machine and withdraw everything :)
I've noticed that at least some self-serve grocery checkout setups actually look at your signature to see if it looks like a signature, and not just a squiggly line. Unfortunately, my signature really does look like a squiggly line, so it always gets rejected.
I bought a spoon at Williams-Sonoma the other day and the cashier asked for my ID and checked the signature against the card, what I had just signed on the receipt, and my drivers license.
Starbucks doesn't even require a signature. They just swipe the card.
Lots of Shell stations now require you to enter the billing ZIP code before you can get gas.
Signatures on the other hand are becoming less and less used anyways. For example, go to any supermarket and you scan your own card. The store never ever looks at your card and the signture that you sign is worthless.
There is a reason that the credit card companie are looking into alterative ways to protect security.
No one, not anyone, ever compares the signature on the card to the signature on the receipt. Never. A PIN number would be worlds more effective.
I figured this out when I got my first credit card. If you sign your card, they will never look closely enough at it.
A friend of mine told me that writing "See Identification" in the signature block on a card would work. It sometimes did, but even then merchants would "compare" my signature and OK it. I tried writing "SEE IDENTIFICATION" in large letters with a black Sharpie. Worked better, but not entirely.
I finally came up with a permanent fix, that has yet to fail me:
When I get a new credit card, on the back Signature area I take a black Sharpie and draw X's over the entire signature area. That forces the clerk to ask for ID. It works EVERY TIME. The only time it hasn't worked is when the clerk doesn't bother checking, but there's little you can do about that other than make a scene or report them to their manager. Besides, in some places (maybe all) a signature is not required for purchases $20.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
/.'ed ...
see ID. It is a bit better (not much, but some). The downfall, is that on the east coast (NYC, Washington, Maryland, etc) and Texas they do not bother to check anything (CC, or even when looking at CID, they ignore it; lazy, lazy ppl). In California, Colorado, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico I was checked by everyone.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I tend to sign with my name *and* the name of the store and the date. I've only had a couple of cashiers even comment on it, ever.
You can use anything you want as your signature as long as you can say "Yes, I wrote that." and be able to reproduce it.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
Instead of signing the back of my card, I simply wrote "Please Check ID." Even then, I find that only about 50% of clerks bother to look at the back of the card and ask for ID.
I can't tell people how many times I've written everything from swears to promises of money if people read my signature when I sign and haven't had a single person say anything to me. This problem is significantly greater when I sign electronic pads at businesses after swiping my card. They don't even ask to see the card.
And credit card companies complain about rampant theft and people filing bankrupcy... yet the security on these cards is ridiculous. They promise to pay ALL debt incurred due to a stolen card, yet they give out miniature sized cards to put ON YOUR KEYCHAIN and no one gives half a shit about what you sign when you swipe the damn thing. The whole system is a joke.
If I were running the credit card companies, I would hold the vendors responsible for any loss due to fraud that was a result of their NOT checking signatures and ID's.
THAT would put a stop to that.
I managed a record store for many years in the 90's. Retail clerks just don't care if a card is stolen or not. OK, some of them do, but the vast majority are getting paid too little and are too busy to really put that much effort into it.
A teenager making 5.15 an hour and being tasked with not only greeting an assisting every single person who walks through the door (whether they want help or not) but also straightening, restocking, sweeping, cleaning the windows, cleaning the bathroom, and a host of other menial tasks is hardly going to take the time to scrutinize the signature on every credit card they handle.
Aside from that, retail clerks are hardly expected to by handwriting experts...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The safest thing to write is 'See ID'.
Well, it's safe because it forces them to check the ID of the card's user, and it's funny because you can really tell if they care or not, since maybe people check it 1/10 of the time.
Of course, someone could still buy gas, order online/over phone with it., etc.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Try as you might, but the litle area you put your signature on the back of the card doesn't last a month. It wipes off all too easily in your warm wallet after time. The friction of slipping it out against another card hurts it worse.
Why don't more credit card companies just put a picture on it? It won't work for certain transactions(gas pumps, mail order, etc), but if it attempts to be physically used(ie cashier has to pick it up & use it) at least that'll foil the would-be idenity thief. I know one company does the picture id thing.
Or would privacy advocates be up in arms?
Instead of signing the back of his credit cards, my dad writes "Ask for photo ID". If they don't, he asks them calmly if the signatures match. If the cashier says yes, he asks to talk to their supervisor. He doesn't make a big fuss out of it most of the time, and tends to joke around with the cashiers more than make them feel bad, but it gets his point across. He also praises those cashiers that do actually ask for photo ID.
I like it because it has the net effect of making cashiers more likely to check ALL signatures, not just his.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The credit card companies actually advertise this as a feature. Hasn't anyone seen the "Visa Check Card" commercials?
"Thanks, but I'll have to see some ID."
That's their sole "feature" - that credit cards are less secure than checks. And the percentage that they siphon from the credit card / direct check transaction goes to cover any fraud.
So I fail to see how this is an issue. If someone uses my card fruadulently, then I get reimbursed. That is a lot easier than fooling around with checks from a consumer standpoint. From a business standpoint, it is a ripoff because the cost of credit card / direct check transactions *could* be lower.
In the end, the banks don't even make an effort to catch small scale fraudsters. At one point, I helped a friend do just that but we were displeased to find that the bank and police did not care when we showed them our findings.
More
Speaking of useless, I was at the grocery store the other day and a guy failed at entering his pin code for his atm card a bunch of times. After that, the customer asked what time they closed and left, LOL
if signatures were actually needed you wouldn't be able to use your credit card to buy through the telephone or do any online shopping.
Every place I go to to buy something just asks for my id anyways. Best buy and stores like that are the worst. $19 dvd, need to see another id...What???
Its 19 freaking dollars! I could see if it were a 4k tv but a stupid $19 dvd? Whats the point of a signature anymore if no one bothers to care that its there or not, they just want to see a picture id and match the pic on the id to the person standing in front of them.
Get rid of signatures and just make all credit cards have photo's embedded in them. When you swipe it displays a small photo of you on the screen. There's your sig right there.
this article went from funny to rather obnoxious quite quickly. And you wonder why geeks cant get laid.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The agreement you are making in signing the line is governed by contract law. All that is necessary is some indication you have agreed (and of course you have to understand what you are agreeing to but that's not relevant here). A simple x or even less can do it. Remember how the early settlers in the Americas took land from the native peoples. The native people in general did not write in the language of the settlers, so an X sufficed as a signature (or sign that an agreement had been made). Now if this guy had been using someone else's card without permission this would be news. Well, actually it is news because most people do not have even a basic understanding of contracts (in the U.S.). It is a failure of the compulsory schools and a means to the extraction of (the little) money from the have-not's into the hands of the have's.
I've come up with the ultimate 'Impossible to Forge' signature:
I DO IT DIFFERENTLY EVERY TIME!
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
If slashdot isn't going to support mirroring, they should at least link all the pages of the article so that mirrordot will retrieve them.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Here in Italy, not only it is very difficult that someone get a glance to your signature but also nearly no-one asks for an ID. M.
Sure, it's probably too easy to use someone else's credit card without their permission. But remember that the transactions are not settled until long after the swipe (say, a month). Credit cards, evil as they are with their obscene interest rates, do offer substantial protection for consumers and in case of fraud you have recourse without having to pay a cent.
For example, if someone else purchases something with your card (fraud) you can call up your credit card company and indicate that you did not conduct this transaction, and that the merchant does not have your signature on file. They will check and see, indeed, the signature is not available.
Another example (a bit off topic but still interesting) is when the Canadian discount airline, Jetsgo, suddenly went bankrupt. They were even selling tickets to passengers the day before they shut down operations. AFAIK, people who bought their plane tickets by credit card had their transactions cancelled because they were not / could not be provided the product or service they paid for. There was no legitimate sale.
In the UK they do look at the back of the card, but they let almost anything pass, including some signatures that look nothing like the one on the card.
Cashiers don't care as they are paid crap money to doa tedious job and it's unlikely they will be sacked over a fraudulant card transaction unless it's a big one.
I don't know if this is true everywhere in the USA, but at many places I go now the cashiers are not required to check the credit card signature if the purchase is under $25.
I was working at a Walmart last summer to help pay for college (should I be posting this as AC?), and they are pretty clear to the cashiers there to check ID if it is unsigned, and to verify the signature if it is signed. Being one of the largest corporations in America probably has something to do with their strictness on the issue. Although you do feel pretty bad when some old lady doesn't have another form of valid ID and an unsigned card....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Google cache here.....
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
If the merchant doesn't check the signature, that's not your problem, seriously.
The merchant is taking all the risk. If the cardholder rejects the payment as unauthorized, and they can't show a valid signature, the merchant will be out the money, not you.
I wrote the above on my Credit Card.
I get asked to see my ID about 2/3 of the time. If I don't get asked, I complain. If I'm spending over $100, and don't get asked, I frequently complain to a manager, too.
See, when push comes to shove, your security is really your own problem, and if you don't take simple steps like above, you deserve what you get. (EG: NADA)
If even 5% of everybody did what I suggest, this wouldn't be a problem...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The card is about 3 years old, the signature has worn off completely, and I can't resign it (so far no pen seems to write on the mangled signature panel). So they always check my ID.
But what's the point anyway? I can go online and spend thousands of dollars with no verification, so what is the point of checking my ID in store?
LordBodak's journal.
Sorry, but J00 F41[ 1T!!!
The signature is just to prove that it was you who bought the suff.. i'm guessing any writing of yourself can do, the signature is just "official" writing. Should you recieve the list of transactions you made , and one of them is not yours and the "signature" doesn't match yours, you're not paying. It's for your protection, not theirs.
I have all of my credit cards signed upside-down. I laugh my ass off everytime some clerk takes the card and the receipt, holds them together, and makes that "yup, they match" look on their face, when I know good and well that my signature rightside-up cannot possibily match my signature upside-down.
this seems to be regional. some areas of the USA i won't get sig checked much, but it seems around in Minnesota (where I live) I do. I have "SEE ID" written on the back of mine, and a lot of places, maybe 70% seem to ask for my ID. Some places do so because they have a policy to look all the time (the grocery store i usually shop at), where some places look in response to my SEE ID. Some places don't look but in a way that seems justified- at the food co-cop I shop at they know me well enough, so I don't feel too insecure about it.
But then again, I have had places that look at "SEE ID" and compare it with my craptastic signature, pretending to compare them. Which is plainly BS. But not too often.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Okay, I'm sure that everyone has stories about how useless they are, but I'll share mine.
A month or two ago, checking out in the grocery store line, I got a new clerk. When I swiped my card, the person training her told her to check the card. I was using my wife's card with her name on it and it wasn't even signed. The clerk proceeded to take the card, she examined the front carefully and then examined the back. Then she handed the card back with a smile as if to say, "Yep. It's a real credit card alright."
Worthless.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
When you go to closing look at the first time you sign your name vs. the 68th or what ever is required. If you signature is consistent my hat is off to your, mine (now I do have a very long last name) steadly degenerated.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:0NXYo63xW3QJ: www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Furthermore, I find that cashiers will check my face against the picture on all my cards without fail. Perhaps it's just my face?
I'm dysgraphic (a learning disability similar to, and often accompanied by dyslexia). This means that my signature changes pretty much every time I put pen to paper. Now I just make a little scribble - unique every time. No-one has cared for the past 6 or 7 years. No-one except one grocery store who refused to put through two £5 purchases within the same month as the sig didn't match. When I presented ID I was told I could have just mugged some poor guy and put my photo on his student card (despite the photo being printed directly on the plastic!). Had a massive arguement with the manager (both times) and finally got the transaction authorised once I threatened to complain to HQ about their mistreatment of disabled shoppers. Some banks in the UK put customers photo's on the back of the card instead of a signature strip - mine doesnt. Dysgraphics are not considered at all by UK banks and services.. Signatures on card's are completely pointless. David
I work twice a week at a large-chain record store. We've all be instructed, repeatedly, to check for the signatures. As a low-level manager there, I make damn sure the store associates are doing it.
We won't take a card without a signature on it, or process a transaction for someone whose name doesn't appear on the card (including family). While we check to see if the signature matches, we generally WON'T generally call someone out on a signature that looks different, unless the purchase is unusually large. If we have a suspicion that someone is using a card fraudulently, we notify our managers, who then notify our corporate office and mall security.
We're not in the business of accusing people without air-tight evidence, because it's bad customer service. Once the appropriate parties have been notified, we and others in our chain keep an eye out for the potential offender and look for more blatant signs of theft or theft of services.
Even worse is that, now, most DMVs make you sign your identification card digitally (like you do with your UPS deliveries). What's the problem with this? Well, when I signed mine at the DMV in 2000, they said "sorry, that isn't valid - sign again".
"What the hell are you talking about? Of course that's valid. That's how I sign my name."
They said that you can't sign your name with any squiggles or crossing lines. My name has a line from the first letter of my last name that slashes through the top of the other letters in my last name. They said that was not valid. So I had to sign it again, without it.
Now, how is that a big problem? Try signing for something where they require checking the signature on your photo identification. I've had people say "have you changed your signature recently?". I even had to sit at my own bank for half an hour once, while they worked out how to deal with my signature not matching - exactly - that on my card.
In other words, I have to sign my signature like the one on my identification card. But the one on my card is not my valid signature, because that's not how I sign things - nor have I ever in my entire life.
There's a lot of places around PA, that no longer require a signature at all for purchases under like $20 or so... Starbucks is one such place...
I found it interesting that whenever I'd go to Europe every single clerk would carefully scruitinize my signature and compare it to that on the credit card. What a contrast to the States, where they don't even bother to look 99% of the time!
I haven't signed my credit card, and just about everytime I use it, I'm asked for ID. Definitly a better verification system than just looking to see that its signed, or the signatures match.
Other people see my credit card signature? I don't know, but I can't remember the last time that someone has physically seen the signature. Nearly every place here has the digital pads you sign on and you swipe the card yourself. While they're scanning my items, I swipe, once its done and I get the receipt and its all good I sign and hit ok, I never give them my card. For the places without those machines, they generally never make me sign.
I do have a my signature in regular pen on the back of the credit card and then See ID written on the end of the signature with a sharpe, but I have NEVER been asked to see my ID.
As such, you get this box thrust into your hands and you're asked to type in your PIN in full view of all the people around you.
Sometimes you can cover it up with the other hand, but this gets a little difficult if you are actually holding the machine with one of those hands.
Unsurprisingly Chip and Pin fraud is still climbing although the banks are spinning it by claiming it would be worse if we didn't have it. Hardly the end to card fraud that they originally claimed.
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I can't wait for the morons who say that they always write "Check ID" on their credit card instead of their signature, when that actually technically invalidates your credit card, as part of your agreement with your credit card company is that you sign your fucking card. READ THE FINE PRINT, MORONS, I AM SICK OF ARGUING THIS WITH YOU.
Ahem.
Unless of course your name is actually Check ID, I guess.
My girlfriend came across an unusual security checking device the other day. She was in Circuit City buying some inkjet refills when the cashier asked her to use a new biometric device.
"At Circuit City your security is job #1, please provide a sample of blood, urine, or semen", said the cashier.
"Look, just take my panies", said my girlfriend, "you'll find all three on there".
In Canada only your current employer and the Government have a right to you Social Security Number.
Even when you apply for a job you do not need to give it to the employer. They only need your Social Security Number when they issue you your first check.
I have often refused to give out my number on applications. I have been told they will decline my application if I do not give it. My response is the always the same - give me every Social Security Number of owner of the company and I will consider that a trade. Usually there explains are the same augments I use for not giving mine out.
The governments need to start taking fraud and Identity theft seriously. I have heard of individuals having their house sold by Identity thieves. How would you like to come home from work and have a new family living in the house you paid for? They have all the legal documents saying you sold it to them! Mean while if you can afford a lawyer you might be out of the house for years while the court system tries to figure things out. I recall reading somewhere that the City of Edmonton has had 27,000 houses stolen. Yet the government does not see this as an issue.
I fear that action will only occur when some brave smart criminal steals the identity of the politicians and ruins their lives.
My uncle had his -signature- denied on a formal paper (I think it was for a loan/morgage on his house ; Something financial); :) ).
His signature excists of yer normal scribble, but the O in his name, has a smiley face (he's very consistent with that
When the bank noticed his signature they said they could not allow it, and wanted him to re-sign.
After he showed various ID on which his autograph -did- have that smiley, and they -still- wouldn't want to accept it, he turned to another bank, where they did not give him any slack.
The last time I got asked for my ID, I was paying with a debit card. All the cashier did was compare the picture on the ID to my face, and the name on the ID to the name on the card. Seems about as secure, or more so, than trying to make sense of most people's signatures.
It seems to me that nobody here trusts banks. Why not simply keep enough cash on you for your purchases, and have less to worry about? I can understand having a credit card for emergencies, and a debit card for getting the cash out, but if you leave your debit card at home when you're not getting cash, it can't be stolen anyway.
Personally, I'm not a fan of a company like Citigroup getting 3-4% of any purchase I make, and I'd prefer not to cut the profit margins of the small businesses I shop at in that way.
I've worked in retail for a while and I'll say that in some respects it's the customers that are the problem. Most of the places I've been have had a loose policy of checking the backs of unsigned cards/CID/"SEE ID" cards. Whenever I've had to work the cash register I do diligently check the ID of the person I'm ringing up.
More often than not, though, people that are ringing you up won't enforce those rules because the customers will get pissed that you are wasting their time with checking for ID. I remember one time that I wouldn't accept an unsigned card from this lady. I would have accepted it with ID, even though technically the card isn't valid until it's signed. The lady didn't have any ID on her though. So she said that she would sign it right then, so that I could accept it. I told her that doing so would defeat the purpose of requiring a signature or ID. She started getting pissed at me that I wouldn't accept it. I suggested to her that she go up to the ATM and get some money. After a bit, of arguing with me and my manager she did and came back with some cash to pay.
The problem is that most cashiers try to avoid people like this by just accepting everything. Not only that, but the people waiting in line start getting pissed that it is taking so long to pay for their items if you are spending too much time putzing around with someone's Credit Card and ID. One thing that I have noticed is that most cashiers will ask for ID, if you pull it out with your card though. I guess they think that since it's already out, then they can just glance at it to make sure it's right.
My favorite signature verification system is the one UPS uses. Their tablets with the black rubbery signing area are so hard to write on that it's nearly impossible to make anything tht doesn't look like scribbles. None of the UPS personnel ever bother to look at at either.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
when your children sign for you? If a mother sends her kid to the grocery store and the kid signs his/her name on the mother's card, most places accept it. I don't know if they're SUPPOSED to accept it, but they do. And in today's age of parents having different names from their children, it really doesn't matter who signs who's name. Any old kid could say it's his parent's card and get away with it.
So I ask you, "Why even have signatures?!" They're all but useless.
In Finland it's (the 'signature' on the receipt) called "a specimen of handwriting". It doesn't need to match on the signature on your credit card. However, I believe one should write some characters at least. Btw, I celebrated the Einstein's jubilee year by signing a receipt "E=mc^2" ;-)
Writing 'See ID' on your card is an excercise in retardedness more than anything else.
The signature panel is not there to prove your identity... its there to show that you agreed to the terms of the cardmember agreement. (ie you agree to pay) It has NOTHING to do with your card's security.
When you sign a credit card draft, it says something to the tune of "I agree to adhere to the terms of the previously agreed to cardmember agreement". Your signing the card signals that you agreed to adhere to that agreement.
Its an outdated and silly mechanism that still exists because the precise meaning of electronic signatures still varies in some jurisdictions.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I've been signing a smiley face for at least a year or 2, and not a single person has said a thing. I have gotten some laughs from the cashiers though!
I know everyone in concerned about credit card security, but please consider:
1 - Don't just write "see id" on the signature line of your card. Most people don't realize that credit cards are transferable. That is why they almost always contain the phrases "NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED" and "AUTHORIZED SIGNATURE". If you fail to sign your card, then the person who steals it will just sign it for you. It doesn't matter if the signature matches the name on the front of the card. It only matters if the signature on the back matches the signature on the receipt. If writing "see id" on the back of your card makes you feel safer, great, but please remember to also sign the card.
2 - If you want someone to check your ID when you sign your card, please hand it to the cashier with your credit card.
3 - The security of your credit cards is primarily your concern not the concern of the cashier. I assure you that someone who refuses payment to some yuppie that forgot their driver's license would almost assuredly be reprimanded when that same person calls in to complain. And they WILL complain. People are not reasonable. YOU may be, but trust me, not everyone is as understanding as you are.
Cheers!
-Pointed Stick
My dad got in a minor car accident a few years ago (not his fault). The insurance wanted to make sure he wouldn't sue, so they called him up and asked him to take a $500 settlement about it for "whiplash." He said, "No thanks," but they continued to badger him. Finally the agent asked him if he had a wife. He said yes, and the agent's response was, "Well, give the money to her, I'm sure she'll appreciate it." Fast forward some. The check arrives, made out to my dad's name + "A married man". When he went to deposit it, the bank teller got confused, and was wondering how she should go about verifying that he was indeed married. Seriously though, I've noticed more and more cashiers checking my signature after I buy something with CC. Which is funny, because my sig is so bad, I can't even read it.
If you do not take cards with CID on the back, It will be only a matter of time before you are reported to VISA/Discover. Both accept that customers want an ID back up on their cards and accept this. Basically, you run the risk of losing the ability to use charge cards at the facility. At that point, how happy do you think that patrons will be? And yes, you were total jerks.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Paying with plastic is my way around hassle and if they're going to give me one I'm sure to pay them back with some."
Wow! What a brave stance! You show those bastards who are trying to protect you from fraud. Make sure that if you do get ripped off not to go crying to the credit card company, after all, that would be a hassle. Right?
I don't have to sign when I use my credit card to purchase something over the phone or online, why do I have to sign if I am in person? Also, what good does it do? Is the $5.15 per hour drone going to get all CSI on my ass if they don't match exactly? Please.
Speak truth to power.
As a heavy drinker that uses a debit card often at bars I'll be the first to tell you that just about any scribble will do.
I sometimes just scrawl a blob for a signature and apparently it works.
What is it with Slashdot lately. We should change the slogan from "News for Nerds" to "Misrepresenting the Blindingly Obvious as Something Important."
I know I'm trolling but come on. A climbing percentage of the stories lately are just people stating the obvious.
News flash: nobody checks your credit card sig. Well no kidding. I'm glad Slashdot is here to tell us these things.
News flash: pop-up ads for a free iPod are misleading and actually getting the iPod requires you to buy stuff. Wow. I'd have NEVER GUESSED if Slashdot hadn't broken this critical bit of news for me.
News flash: People play solitaire and minesweeper at work. My GOD what next?
What's next? Sitting on your duff and eating too much makes you fat?
This just in from Slashdot! Michael Jackson is weird!
Whenever it's self-swipe a cashier never asks to see the card. They just slide the slip over, you sign it and that is the end.
And these self-swipe stations are popping up in lots of places.
But when you have to hand the card over I very rarely run into a signature verification process. Most of them just swipe it and give the card back to you immediately.
But when I do run across a scrutinizer I pointedly ask them how many classes they took to become a handwriting analysis expert. That gets the point across in a hurry.
LRC = large retail chain (ie, their logo is a red bullseye). Anyway, their CC validation is non-existant, you merely insert your CC into a card reader and up pops a signature box on a screen that the clerk CAN NOT see, so even if he/she wanted to validate the signature, there's no way. In fact, I've been told by a district manager that no one at this LRC checks signatures and that the box just digitally records signatures and sends them to a bank in case there's a question. Clerks are still supposed to use "good judgement" in "accepting" a card/check for payment, but that boils down to the social engineering aspect of theft (the most successful means).
A few years back a thief broke into our van while we were at the beach with my parents. We didn't notice the theft until later that afternoon(only the credit cards were stolen). On one card the crooks racked up nearly $15K in less than 15 minutes at Dillards. We met with the Dillards manager the next day only to be told that their corporate policy it to not check ID or validate the signature.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Nobody objects that her card isn't signed and almost nobody asks to see her ID.
Why don't all companies just use a photo credit card. I've had one of these cards for over 10 years, and though I have other cards from other companies, I wonder every time I compare these. This photo card must not be used too much since most places that I shop people do a double take on this card and comment that it is a great idea. My photo on it is 10 years old but it's still better than the 10 year old signature that does not look anything like my current one. In addition my signature is also present on the front of the card right below the photo...and of course this one does not rub off.
Then again, some morons still try to verify the half rubbed off signature at the back of the card and hassle me for a miss match on that.
I've noticed that some places will check the signature and some places don't. What I do is write "See ID" on the back of my credit cards. That way when a cashier checks the signature (s)he'll ask to see my ID (which happens quite a bit). It makes it harder for somebody to steal my card.
I was at the cashier in a bookstore, about to pay for a couple of books. The clerk didn't want to take my unsigned credit card, and handed it back to me. He turned around to grab a bag or something, while I grabbed a second unsigned card, signed it when he wasn't looking, and proceeded to pay while everyone in line was chuckling.
Bottom line: it's a security measure that relies upon untrusted and unreliable humans for enforcement, which makes it pretty weak. A more secure measure are ATM PINs, but they trade off the ease of online transactions (PINs should not be seen by merchants, requiring the bank to be in the transaction, etc.).
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Am I missing something? Of course there is always forgery, but whenever I use a credit card they always check my signature versus the signature on the back of the card.
I've been in line (and also worked as cashier) and have seen my share of people get ornery when their unsigned card is refused or if asked to produce an ID. How can we expect vendors to check them when we at the same time give them hell for doing so?
The same also goes for counterfeit bills. People just don't like them being checked, as though it were a personal "I don't trust you" shot at them.
All that said, I find the pin number/security to rent movies ridiculously over-the-top. So I'm not sure where that leaves me...
I have written "SEE PHOTO ID" on all of my credit cards with a black sharpie. Most of the time I am never asked to present an ID but I am always happy to show it to them when they ask me.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
If people are not checking signatures properly, then they need a polite talking-to at the very least. What it absolutely does not need is a system with one fault ripping out and replacing with a different system with worse faults.
..... that doesn't work for signatures.
It takes me an hour to learn to forge a signature {don't ask}, so I guess it would take about that long for any thief who stole my card. That gives me a window of about one hour from when the card goes missing before I have to do anything about it.
With chip and PIN, there is no signature, just the same 4-digit number as used at the HITW machine. However, unlike a HITW, there is not necessarily a security camera watching the transaction {and even if there is, it's the store's camera, not the bank's camera}. Given the readily availability of camera telephones {for recording PIN entries -- and shielding the keypad won't help, it's your shoulder and your elbow they're looking at}, and the ease with which a card can be stolen unnoticed, I don't think it's worth the risk of using chip and PIN. Of course, it's also possible to extract a four-digit number with a knife held against the throat
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In the UK we don't have photo ID. So when we were signing credit cards there was much more reason to check that the signature on the slip matched the card. Now, we've adopted a much more secure system using a smart chip on the card and entering a four digit pin into the card reader. No more signing slips. They've had this for many years in France and have a much lower incidence of card fraud. This is a good thing. I've never been able to duplicate the signature on the back of any of my cards. It always comes out different on the slip (different surface, different pen, etc.). Chip'n'pin should reduce fraud. So now we're exposed to "card not present" as the new fraud.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Due to signatures being so easy to forge if you actually fraud people as a lifestyle, its worthless to check every single one to make sure they verify
Chip and pin is the best way to replace this, making the cashiers desk more like an atm system and therefore more secure, as only the user knows their pin
Business Voyeur
I when I have to sign, I usually sign something else. I've been using "Mace Windu" recently. And as a 5' 10" whiteboy, I think it would be pretty easy to prove that I'm not who I sign as.
Nobody checks. The back of my card isn't even signed.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The signature on the back of your credit card is NOT for the cashier to compare signatures. It is there as your formal acceptance of your credit card companies policies.
According to the merchant's agreement with the credit card company, cashiers are NOT supposed to accept cards that have not been signed. If they do, the merchant, and not the credit company, is responsible for any fraud.
My girlfriend is in a wheelchair, and many of the places that have the 'swipe your own card' machines are placed too high for her to reach. She gets me to sign her name and while I felt it rather ridiculous that no other method existed for her to sign her own card, I still complied.
But instead of signing her name, I just wrote things like "she can't reach" or "this is dumb".
A month or two after we received a phone call from VISA who questioned her on all these 'signatures' and wondered why they didn't match, and why she wasn't signing her name.
They were polite, but asked that her actual name be used from now on.
Here in So Cal, I've noticed most places have employees trained to try to check ids. But it's gotten so common that they're just as lazy, and any old driver's license will do. In several instances I've bought take-out lunch for the office using a company card in someone else's name. The clerk always asks for id, makes a cursory glance at it, and then rings it up. They don't check a darn thing.
I didn't know what that space in the credit card was for! Ok this is a joke, but my credit card has been unsigned for 1 year and nobody checked the signature in the purchases. However copying a signatures is easy (even if they check they will do it superficially), i do not know why there aren't PINs for credit cards.
Once again, the DDOS machine called slashdot has decided to cost a business some money and take their webserver down as well. Who needs a botnet of 10,000 zombie pc's? Just submit a url in a slashdot story.
Doing an on-going informal poll has found that more and more webmasters are pre-emptively blocking visitors with slashdot in the referrer. It's almost as mandatory as a firewall if you're going to put up a webserver.
I've actually written "CHECK ID" on the FRONT of my cards in big bold "sharpie" print. If they still don't check, i just look at them shaking my head.
A lot of people have talked about writing "See ID" on the back of the card for the merchant to check. I've dealt with this before, and if the merchant is following the proper procedures (visa here), they should make you sign the card before they will accept it. The US Postal service will not accept it at all.
So this should only be a one-off for people who do it, although from my experience and most of the reports here it seems that very few places follow through on this even if they check.
As for the main question, are the sigs useless? Well no, they're not foolproof but act as a line of defense which makes fraud a bit harder, puts off some people from trying it and maybe gets some fraudsters caught.
... draw stick figures doing it all the time on my debit card receipts.
What is slashdot?
Say you lost your signed credit card and some nefarious type found it. With about 2 minutes of practice they would be able to forge your sig good enough to get by the minimum-wage-high-school-attending cashier so why bother with this lame security device from our distant past. Another reader mentioned signing onto a screen which does not seem to check your sig against any database but makes it easier to store I guess. If the stores can roll out this technology then there should be nothing standing in the way of biometrics. Im currently typing this on a ThinkPad T42 with a fingerprint reader and it works great so to me it would seem that the technology is ready for prime-time. Maybe using bio-metrics and having a picture card backup if the biometrics fails to match would be the answer.
The signature on the back of the card is your acknowledgment of the credit card CONTRACT. It's not a security feature. I don't think it was ever supposed to be a security feature. The reason companies are supposed to refuse your card if you haven't signed it is because that means you haven't accepted the credit card contract, meaning that legally you're not allowed to use the card.
Read the fine print in your credit card contract; I did. That's what the signature is there for. That's ALL it's there for.
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
I always sign mine as Daffy Duck.
Having just had my acount hijacked I can speek to some issues. Leaving aside the issues of the wrong kind of paranoid people we have. Theirs the bank side issues my acountant wanted my SSN I refused to give it on GP and asked what other ways I can say who I was. None. this is bank of america. I was eventually put on the phone and had the bank manager and me and their fraud folks do a all stake holders. Mericles of mericles.
I have moved the majority of my money to washingon mutual. The amusing thing is that my acountant told me "It doesn't make much of a difference to us if you use your SSN or not---it's our sales folks and how easly bought off they are to sell your info"
I don't know about you WTF kind of crack pot banking insitutions do we have that DEMAND a SSN knowing that is the SINGLE WORST most hairbraned security scheme. EVER. I DEMAND A REFUND!!! I want my money back on a counrty that's FUCKED UP THIS BAD...can I get my money back...SECURITY !! We have a live one...please get me my money back!!
Has anyone ever tried to deny a charge that they signed with a fake name? The CC company will see that no real signature was ever put on the card. Wouldn't they have to agree?
You'll have to go through the hassle of a new card, I assume, but could it work?
Couldn't you buy a big screen TV, sign it "Ima Theif", and argue the charge when it shows up on you're bill. I wonder if the CC companies would start taking security more seriously if that started happening.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
But, when I submitted the SAME story to /. a month ago it just got rejected.
Who's balls do you have to suck around here to get an article published!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Not really specifically about Credit Cards...
When I bought my house, and I had to sign a million papers, they handed me the first one, and I wrote my signature. The same one I write EVERYTIME, which I figured the whole point of a signature was.
"No, don't sign it like that. See where we typed it beneath the line. Sign it like that."
I always do my full name (since I go by my middle name, but all documentation is with my first name.) They typed First M. Last.
I wrote what they wanted me to, but thought it was pretty pointless as far as a signature goes.
Even worse is when they want you to 'initial changes.' I've been told if you make a mistake on a check and need to change it, just initial the change.
So, my grandma wrote a check to my wife, but she put the wrong name on it. The bank was going to accept it if "my grandma" changed the name and initialed it.
Do you have a signature intialization style?
I don't think Signatures were ever any good...they were just the 'best you could do'.
I think 'thumb prints' would be good. The store doesn't need the print. The bank doesn't even need the print. It's just if there's a challenge to a transaction, or contract, etc, you'd just have to give a new thumbprint to verify.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
I run a medium-sized store. The credit card signing IS useless. Why? What do we do with the credit card signatures? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They get put in a big box, and every so often, they get thrown away. Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover makes no requirements on us to do anything with the signatures. The only reason that we could possibly need a signed receipt is if a transaction is fraudulent, and somebody needs proof that they did NOT sign the receipt. And honestly, that's just a guess. Maybe it's buried somewhere in the 100 pages of fine print, but I've never seen it.
1. Credit card companies don't ask for signatures, even in the case of fraud. It's not worth their time and money.
2. Neither myself or any of my employees are handwriting experts. Somebody could forge a signature very easily. It ain't rocket science.
Really, all the signatures for are to provide a sense of security to the tin-foil hat types. In reality, a credit card is as good as cash, but if you lose it, you don't feel the negative consequences. So, while credit card signatures are useless, I readily use mine everywhere without worrying about a signature.
I don't respond to AC's.
As with most security, the system is broken because it relies to the poorly paid employee giving a hoot.
I sign my credit card with a large "ASK FOR ID" printed in big black letters. About half of the people that flip the card over ask for my ID, which comes down to a generous 1:50 actually asking for my ID.
Sometimes I give them a hard time "you should ask, you should care, blah blah" - most of the time I do not, as I remember how much I cared having a 10 hr no break shift running an entire gas station at 17 years of age. (I ended up not caring at all, it sucked. Americans are pretty selfish and rude to people in the service industry - maybe this is true in other cultures)
When anyone checks my credit card and actually asks for my ID, I sincerely thank them and let them know that I appreciate their concern and wish that more people would do the same.
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Just the other day, I accidentally handed my student card to a cashier at a gas station. She just rung it up without looking at it, and only noticed when it beeped an error message.
Mirror can be found at nyud.net
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
Credit Card companies explicitly tell merchants to refuse cards with "See ID" written on them. I was refused service at a Post Office for this reason.
As far I as I can tell, the credit card companies WANT to encourage fraud, because (a) they don't pay for it, the vendors do, and (b) advertising fraud-protection (at the vendor's expense) makes them look good. The credit card companies sell the customers on the convenience, and then together the companies and the consumers squeeze the vendors.
I was standing in a supermarket checkout line in Cambridge in the UK once and this pretty festy looking homeless dude is in front of me with a 6 pack of Tennents Super Strength lager. Anyway he whips out this busted up debit card, all scratched and bent, obviously stolen or found. The pimply checkout chick just takes the card and incredulously turns to the bum and asks him if he would like any cash out with his purchase. In the UK you don't have to type in a pin to get cash out with purchases at the supermarket you just have to sign and well...... You should have seen the guys eyes light up. It was going to be his lucky day. "50 pounds please"
The cashier then takes the card and swipes it. Unfortunately for the alkie bum the card was too damaged and wouldn't swipe through the machine correctly. If he had been a bit luckier he would have easily made off with 50 quid and a 6 pack of lager. What was really astounding was the robotic attitude of the checkout chick to the obvious scam. She would have happily handed over that 50 quid if the card had swiped.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
But you have to do an awful lot.
Such as using one of those credit cards to buy some more bandwidth after the slashdotting?
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
IANAL, and I suppose things could have changed since last I checked, but neither a matching signature nor ID are necessary to make a valid credit card purchase. It's a bearer instrument.
Look who the ID checking helps: the issuing bank. All you're liable for is the first $50. If your card is stolen, it doesn't make a difference if the thief charges only $50 or runs up $5K. The banks have done a great job with the propaganda that consumers are protected by the hassle, but it's all bull.
I used to work at a software store, and the regional manager was very concerned that all employees check signatures for all credit card purchases. We even had this long set of rules, and one of them was, "The credit card must have a valid name in the signature area". It is illegal, after all, to put something besides your signature on your card.
So one day, I'm working and this college girl comes in and picks up Wing Commander 3 from the shelf. She walks up to me, smiles, and gives me her credit card. In the signature area is written: "Please ask for ID". So I ask to see her ID, and she smiles at me and says, "Thank you! You're the first person all day who's asked to see my ID." Now, I'm starting to get a good vibe from her, until I remember the rules. I compare her driver's license signature to her credit card, and I'm about to hand it back to her and ask her about the game as a way to get her to talk to me (she's probably buying the game for someone, but who knows, maybe I'm about to meet a single, female gamer - they DO exist!) when the manager wanders over. I suppose he'd seen her dig out her driver's license. Crap. So now I have a choice - it's really too bad that I loved my job. So I hand her back her license and credit card and say, "I'm sorry, I can't accept this credit card." Well, her smile disappears pretty quick. I try to explain the rule, but she pays with cash and leaves the store pretty quick.
Next time the regional manager was in the store, he complimented me on my performance - my manager must have told him about it. Still, I would have rather had her phone number than a compliment from the sleazy regional manager.
And I never saw her in the store again.
When I'm in other countries, not only does my signature get checked as I'm using a VISA card from a foreign country/bank, but the people doing the checking have the added benefit of checking to see if I look like the person on the card. I've gotten a lot of "that's unmistakenably you" feedback. And it is especially in the US that I get "I wish we had pictures on our credit cards" comments.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
when a criminal signs a slip of paper during a credit card transaction, that strengthens the case against him; he has actively signed to fraudulantly aquire goods/cash with somebody else's card; if his signature matches the one on the stolen card, then he can not claim to have accidentally used the card (somehow?)
also, a signature from the customer, during the legitimate use of a card, is proof the customer actually validated the transaction; it stops unethical salesmen
these are reasons I could come up with quickly; there are probably many more examples why signing for goods is useful, and not just a redundancy; signing for something to make a binding contract is based on years, nay, ages of good practise; recently, PIN entry has been introduced to the UK, and this is also superior to pure card swiping with no authentication, and has some advantages and some disadvantages as compared to signing
GrimRC
I always understood the signature to be a mechanism to protect the merchant not the consumer. This is a "credit" transaction not a "cash" transaction. The merchant through your bank is extending you credit which you are agreeing to pay at some time in the future. Basically if you decide to repudiate the transaction (i.e. say you didnt make the purchase), the merchant has your signature and therefore has some legal standing to claim you actually made the purchase.
I beleive this is the idea behind US $50 consumer liability. It illustrates that the bulk of the liability is with the merchant (and the bank underwritting the credit transaction), however encourages the consumer to take some minimal responsibility if they see fraud happening in their name.
However its interesting to watch the perception of this change over time.
He's right.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
And it can get even sloppier...
When we were scheduled to close on our house, my wife was in the hospital. I had to have her sign a power of attorney so I could go close the deal.
I signed "John Q. Public" and "John Q. Public, Power of Attorney for Jane Z. Public" about 700 times.
My hand wouldn't unclench for an hour.
Video Cameras.
Go ahead, try and write a bad signature, then claim you didn't make that purchase; they'll show the videos of you Entering the store empty handed, picking up the Merch, your time at the Cashier, and Exiting the store, laden with goods.
Theft, Fraud, Perjury...
Same at the Gas Station, they got an image of your license plate and car.
Be black.
...but in some places, you don't even have to sign for the purchase at all. Some fast food places, like Braum's, won't make you sign unless the purchase is over $20. Some automated card acceptors, like the ones at Sonic drive-throughs or the automatic checkout machines at Dillons, don't require a signature either. (Others, like Kmart's auto-checkouts, do require a signature on an electronic pad.)
When I worked at Kmart, we were told to check the signatures, and sometimes we were mystery-shopped to make sure that we did. And whenever a card wasn't signed, we were to ask for another form of ID. I saw a lot of people who either didn't sign their cards or who wrote "See ID" instead.
Technically, you're not supposed to accept cards with no signature, even if they write "see ID"...but you're not supposed to insist on a minimum charge for credit card transactions either, but a lot of people do both.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Talk to any lawyer. Writing "see ID" on the signature block is the worst thing you could ever do! If you haven't also signed the card then you are in violation of the Visa cardmember agreement and the whole $50 or $0 liability thing is out the window because Visa could prove you were neglegent if your card is ever stolen and recovered and they see the dumb-ass move you pulled. Seriously, when asked for ID I always provide my library card - not once has anyone questioned it - ever. Faking an ID is easier than faking a signature.
i sk_management/card_present.html
Also, despite many state attempts at reducing ID theft risk by limiting the info on your drivers license there is still a risk and some states still have SSN's on licenses. So, you are basicaly handing your ID over to what appears to be some moron behind the counter that has a photographic memory and steals your life!
Do not, ever, under any condition provide your ID to a cashier - make them call Visa and report a "code 10": http://usa.visa.com/business/accepting_visa/ops_r
I used to work at Target, and as a backup cashier, I would also check every signature.
It was pointless though, because they never actually told me what to do if the signatures didn't match. During the daily meeting, they seemed to be more concerned with raising the average cashier speed. I don't see how a cashier that checked signatures could make above 80th percentile.
In fact, of the 5 jobs i've had that involved handling credit cards, not a single one trained me on what to do if the signatures and/or identification didn't match.
My new NJ driver's licence has my signature scanned onto it (50% size), underneath the laminate. Would there be any benefit in the credit card companies requiring same? Obviously this would increase production costs of the cards to some degree, but might the idea have some merit, especially if merchants then REQUIRED both the photo ID and card and this could be enforced somehow.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I had never heard about it before. However, I didn't sign a name. I would write things like "Hitler was bad" and "Cigarettes give me cancer" and "I like donuts!" I did this about 50 times before someone said anything and then I told them it was fine and they let me walk out of the store. The second time, about a month later, the girl a 7-11 said "No" and asked me to leave. That ended that game.
One day in a shop I went to pay for a purchase and noticed that my credit card had changed form VISA to MasterCard! On closer examination, I discovered that I had someone else's card. Apart from the user name and the logo it looked just like mine.
My card was missing so obviously it had been switched during some previous transaction. I checked back through my receipts and found, to my amazement, that I had paid for a weekly supermarket shop, a tank of petrol and a small car repair on this other guy's card.
The purchase before had been for a meal on a train home from work a few nights before. On the train they have the habit of collecting several payments at a time and taking them into the kitchen to process. I had been sitting opposite a gentleman at the table and guessed it may have been him.
I live in East Anglia and get off the train at Diss, the stop before the end of the line so I knew this chap would have to get off in Norwich. From there he could have boarded another train or drove off into the countryside. Luckily, when I checked directory enquiries, there was one listing Norwich phone book with his surname and initials. I phoned him up and asked if he had my card in his wallet - he did! What's more he had made three purchases on my card.
I drove to him and we swapped cards. We waited for the statements to arrive and I ended up sending him a cheque for about 30 pounds.
A lucky escape - it's a good job we were both honest. After my experience I'm not really surprised to hear about signatures not being checked. I can understand how it might happen in shops where they know me but all my purchases were not. Here in the UK Chip & PIN is being introduced so that should prevent a similar thing happening. But I always check my card carefully when I get it back now.
A couple of years ago I was applying for a credit card form a company called Egg. I did it all online and you could choose what name you wanted printing on the front of the card.
It did go on to say that it may cause problems and that you may be asked for additional ID if you get anything other than your name put on it.
Mind, I met a guy in a pub once who had his name changed by deed poll to Duncan Disorderly!
indie
My post office wouldn't accept my card with "see id" on the back of it because, according to the fine print, the card is not valid without a proper signature.
Sincerly,
See M. Id
Generally, the reason why the credit card companies don't care is because card fraud in the US is absurdly low compared to the rest of the world. Basically, the system of comparing your buying patterns works.
In Europe, Visa and Mastercard are mandating a new Pin based card system with encryption. Fraud became so bad there that they moved to a whole new card system, requiring every merchant to get a new terminal. (Technically, you can use your old terminal, but the card companies are dropping all the merchant protections).
Very few US merchants care about the sig line. It just makes the lines go slower, they'll eat the fraud to get the sales volume. The only place I've seen that cares is the U.S. Postal Service. Which WILL require the signature panel be signed, and WILL NOT accept "SEE ID". Although, more or less all they are doing is following the same merchant agreement every other merchant is supposed to follow.
I always write "See ID" on the back of my cards. Most people don't bother to check, but some do and then I tell them this story.
When my wife and I were out appliance shopping we went into the local Best Buy. We picked out a washer, dryer, and a couple of other things totaling about $1,800. When we got to the front the cashier was more interested in talking to the young girl standing next to the checkout stand than to even acknowledge my wife and I. With no greeting, and no eye contact, he completed the entire transaction and handed me back the card. It wasn't until I had put my wallet away that he asked to check the signatures. When he saw that the signature line said "See ID" he asked for my ID. I told him that I couldn't show him my ID because the card was stolen and it wouldn't match. His jaw dropped to the ground as he frantically started to void the transaction.
When I got his manager to the front I explained that by not checking before hand he had made the merchant liable for any damages caused by using the stolen card. When the manager told me, " if there had been a problem they would have simply voided the transaction, thus clearing any problems for the person whose card had been stolen." I pointed out that many credit card companies took out the transactions immediately, but processed the returns only after they had been "cleared" by the merchant. (Try it, Target & Best Buy will pull immediately, but not return for a couple of days.) Since they would have just tied up my entire credit limit, if my wife had been out using her legitimate card at a business dinner, it would have been declined causing great anguish on her part possibly opening to a pain and suffering type lawsuit.
I don't always resort to that story, but the kid ticked me off. I wonder if the manager even wrote him up for not acknowledging the customer.
I have been using this "new technology" since 1989. I think the 4 digit PIN codes/Passwords/whatever you want to call it is safer - so long as thieves don't get too sophisticated (or watch over you shoulder). I have *yet* (knock on wood) to have any issues.
Last time i bought a nice bottle of Grey Goose at one of Vegas's fine gentleman establishments they made me resign to match my ID AND proivde a thumb print!
Course I didn't much care at that point.
Some banks will put a picture on your card. Since its on the front, I've found that it is useful, sometimes.
But you still run into issues with self checkout things, where theonly person who actually sees the card is you.
For those of you who are afriad of someone stealing your card and making unauthorized purchases, you can rest easy. The credit card companies have been able to detect fraud at the time of purchase for quite a while now. Ever since they felt comfortable enough to offer everyone "zero liability".
First off, the cashier at your local WalMart isn't a handwriting and signature analysis expert or an identity expert. They aren't expected to be. The credit card companies realized this a long time ago. Strangely enough, if your card is stolen and the clerk compared the signature, the store becomes liable for the fraudulent purchases.
A Visa or MasterCard is what's called a bearer instrument. It's the same as having cash. If I handed you a $20 bill to pay for something, you wouldn't ask for ID. The same rule applies to Visa and MasterCard. They're all three bearer instruments.
On the other hand, AMEX is an owner instrument. Only the owner of the card is allowed to use it. IIRC, Diners' Club is the same way. You must be the owner of the card. If you have an AMEX, and your spouse is on the same account, you will each have your own card with your own name on it, and IIRC a different number assigned to the same account.
Using an owner instrument is a little more tricky. In that case, the cashier should make a cursory check to see if the signatures match, and may ask for ID, however, much more than that is placing liability back on the store instead of the Loss Prevention department of the bank or credit card company.
A few years ago, I was sitting at home and got a call from Nike Online. Within about 10-15 seconds of that call, I had a call from Visa Loss Prevention on call waiting. Someone had stolen my Visa number and attempted to use it to buy a lot of Nike stuff from the online store. Both Nike and Visa caught the fraudulent purchase at the time of sale. They were able to get in touch with me, the local police department, and set up a sting to get the thief. I wasn't charged anything, and had only a minor problem while I waited for my new card to arrive since they had to kill the old number (which sucked as I had just memorized it and the code on the back).
Checking IDs is just as bad as airline security. It does nothing to actually prevent crime. It just gives the underinformed a (false) sense of security.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
the real advantage of credit card signatures is an added criminal charge. In a lot of states using someone else's credit card to buy $1000 worth of stuff amounts to petty theft, and is only grand larceny if you steal a certain monetary value from a single party. Thus the prison terms are often very short. However, if you sign the line, it's fraud, which is usually a felony.
On my card, in bold black letters I have written '*** ASK FOR ID!! **** in the signature slot.
With extremely rare exception, the clerk takes the card, turns it over to check the signature, gives me the card back, and completes the transaction without so much as another word.
I wonder why they even bother with turning the card over to check . . .
-B
I guess that is why all of the world (except for the USA & CANADA, but that might change) are currently going through the EMV migration(EMV = Europay + Mastercard + Visa) ==> replace all magstripe cards with microprocessor cards which will run a fairly sophisticated application.
http://www.emvco.com/
2.1.1.2 Determine if the Card is Valid
The card acceptor must complete the following steps to determine if each card
presented is a valid MasterCard card:
card is not yet valid or expired, the card acceptor must obtain an
authorization from the issuer.
If the account number is listed, the card acceptor must not complete the
transaction without obtaining an authorization from the issuer.
signature panel with the last four digits of the embossed account number
on the face of the card.
on the face of the card with the number displayed or printed from the POI
terminal.
photograph on the card with the person presenting the card.
exception of truck stop transactions and card-read transactions where a
non-signature CVM is used), request personal identification of the
cardholder in the form of an unexpired, official government document.
Compare the signature on the personal identification with the signature on
the card.
2.1.1.3 Unsigned Cards
If the card is not signed, the card acceptor must:
identification information), and
The card acceptor must not complete the transaction if the cardholder refuses
to sign the card.
What's interesting is that now that all the fast food chains are offering "cash or credit", when you pay by credit they don't make you sign anything.
I just hand them my card, they hand it back with my food.
So this makes the whole "signing" thing even more useless.
Wrong. That percentage adds a lot to the cost of goods. Often more than the merchant's own profit.
As I keep mentioning in my posts. I'm employed at a small independant bookstore. It's funny to watch my coworkers when they encounter an unsigned or "see ID" card. They always, without fail ask for ID (Our boss is an e-fraud paranoiac and chews our asses if we dont) BUT...what do they do?
Compare the name on the CC to the drivers license. Signature? By the time the reciept's been signed they have, 99% of the time, handed the card and ID back.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Aside from the anomalous Cambridge beggar density (I too have had the misfortune: "Twenty quid for a bag of chips?! They better have crack in them at that price!"), even more stunning are the fully automatic petrol pumps. Just stick a card in, no signature, no PIN, nothing. If anyone found my debit card, they could help themselves to sixty quid of unleaded and be on their merry way. I really don't think it's beyond the scope of possibility to add some sort of challenge authorisation to these machines.
you need to get a different bank. My bank (USAA) not only doesn't charge me for every ATM transaction at a foreign terminal, it reimburses me for charges made by those foreign terminals (up to a certain dollar value per month). I believe ING does this as well. Both of these banks have the drawback that they don't have a brick-and-mortar presence, but I think that, in USAA's case at least, it is more than mitigated by all of the pluses. Another big downside for USAA (to you, probably) is that it only accepts certain types of customers. ING is all-inclusive, I believe, but I know far less about ING.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The whole "no ID" ads are bull! I could have told you that years ago. It's really a scam by Visa and Mastercard so that you use debit/credit card because that makes the business or the customer pay a fee on every transaction. Notice who advertises for these services...
Anyhow; I've always used my Girlfriend's debit/credit cards because it was easier that way. We hate cash, she's got the credit score and it works that way. About a year ago I was stopped and told that I was committing fraud just standing in line there with the card (which is a lie, and I threw a fit).
Now, I've been a "authorized user" on all of these cards for a while. One store after another stopped letting me use the cards - even though I was on record with Citibank, for example, as a card user. A few times I insisted they call banks (who's numbers are right on the cards) and even the police - but they never did.
What pissed me off is that stores were changing their "policy" on my side of town while the other side of town they still let sons buy x-mas gifts with their mothers credit cards.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Actually, I have had to go back to the merchant to dispute a charge. I had made a roughly $20 purchase, but when my statement came, my $20 purchase was there, plus a second purchase for $250 (recorded about 30 minutes after the intial purchase). When I disputed the $250 charge, the store found a 'signed' receipt for the $250 that looked nothing like the sig on the legit purchase's receipt. Case closed and the offending cashier was fired (the card number was manually entered).
Admittedly, this would have gone unnoticed had I not been in the habit of actually reading my monthly statement as opposed to blindly filing it away.
When my card was stolen, the thief who went on a 1 day shopping spree simply claimed to be my brother. He had a signed note to prove it, and, funny how that signed note did match the signature on the credit card. Not every store bothered to ask him for that signed note, and no one ever asked the thief for his own identification.
Now my CC signature bar has a partial signature and a "check ID." About twice a year a clerk reads it and then asks to see an ID.
For these I usually just put an X through it or a straight line. I always believed that an X was a valid signature.
I t's my impression tha there are two functions a signature fills. The first is that it is an "affirmative act." I think almost anything would do, in theory, except that a signature is what everyone accepts.
The second function of a signature is as identification and by consequence, non repudiation.
An "X" may not be useful for identification, but it is an affirmative act, and therefore valid. I may be totally off base, but that is my understanding of the concept. It is, obviously, only useful in a fundamentally honest and familiar world.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Some new credit card machines require at least a few somewhat recognizable characters. At Harris Teeter when I use my credit card, I have to alter my signature in order for the machine to accept it. I find this somewhat amusing, and somewhat disturbing.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
One rate is for phone or internet orders, and the other is for in-person (cardholder present) sales. Sales without the cardholder present are a higher risk, and the bank charges the merchant (or at least in our case) a higher fee per transaction. I really don't pay attention to what the fees are anymore... there is little we can do about it, so time and energy is better spent trying to increase sales rather than worry about small, unavoidable fees.
Again, according to Robin, the card swipe through the terminal proves that the physical card was present, and the signature proves that the customer was present, saw and accepted the goods. These are factors that, on average over the sum of all transactions, significantly reduce risk. That is why they are important. It is this overall trend that matters to banks and the credit card processing clearinghouses.
Now, in the IT/computer security world, there's a tendancy to think of potential weaknesses, how to exploit them, and how to design countermeasures... roughly in that order, and in this case the first two. Valuable as this is, the constructive approach is to apply creative throught towards improvement, rather than cynical dismissal (common of slashdot comment posters) of the importance of a signature because most clerks don't check.
In fact, the truth is that on average, in-person transactions with a card swipe and signature carry a lower risk of fraud. Perhaps that risk would be even lower if most clerks checked the signature more closely, but even with the reality of today's environment, the card swipe and signature do indeed result in lower risk of fraud, which is passed on to the merchant as a lower fee.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
1 hour later and I'm finally to page 4 of TFA! Poor zug.com... :P
I'm not sure I understand what the big deal is here. Who cares if the clerks check the signature? In the US, at least, if someone steals your card you'll be liable for at most $50 and that's if you don't report it quickly.
The whole idea behind credit card security is to make fraud more difficult, not impossible. They do this by tracking purchasing habits and automatically shutting the card down when they get weird. I've had this happen before when making a lot of purchases at once. It's also why if you go on vacation, you should let the credit card company know.
Credit card companies want it to be easy for people to use their cards. That's why in the commercials they tout the no id requirement. They realize the signatures aren't a reliable means of fraud detection, and hence the signatures aren't a big deal.
Debit card rules are not as nice, but if you report it within two days you're again only liable for $50. After that you're liable for $500. The best thing is to not use debit cards at all...after all if someone steals your credit card, it's not your money they've got. Someone steals your debit card and the money comes right out of your account. Therefore you have to worry about getting YOUR money back.
A friend of mine had given me, what I thought at the time was a great idea, this "See ID" advice and no, it is fucking stupid. Especially when you're in Mexico.
I tried to get some money from a Bureau de Change at Mexico international airport, since their ATM's didn't work. Of which there were two for the entire airport!
The ladies behind the bulletproof glass asked for my passport so they could check, I thought, that my name matched my picture matched my face.
But no. They just checked whether the signature in my passport matched the one on my credit card. Which of course it didn't. And no explaining in spanish would budge their opinion of the non-matchedness of the two "signatures". Denying me any hope of money and leaving me stranded in Mexico.
That was some mindblowingly great advice.
My spoon is too big.
The dude ended up spending $700 bucks of my money! Thankfully the bank got all my money back (that night).
Why oh Why do banks not require pin numbers for charge cards! Signatures are SO bad they're allmost useless!
And it gets better...
Having recently visited California, we tried to pump gas to our rental using an international VISA card. Ok, the pump now asks for pin, which is basically a five digit zip code! Obviously, I do not have one. So what do I do? I enter my hotel zip code and happily pump along! Nice...
I had the same thing happen with my US Passport. The first time I flew out of the country with my newest one I had forgotten to sign it.
The immigration control officer pointed that out to me, waited for me to sign it and then let me in. He did *not* ask me for an additional photo ID.
I stumbled onto the best way to get cashiers to check ID. I had an account that I maxxed out for an 18 month 0% deal. I wrote 'DO NOT USE!' on the front in sharpie to make sure I wouldn't accidently charge something and go over the limit. When the 0% was over and I paid off the balance, I started using the card. Almost everyone noticed it and asked that I show ID. A few people were a bit rude about it, but I just mention that I put it there because of lazy cashiers who don't bother to do their damn job, and it shuts them up quick.
I'd sign it too, for the instance that someone checks the signature but ignores your plea to check ID. If you leave it blank, a thief could sign it for you, and when the signatures look identical, a cashier might be less inclinded to check ID.
That's what I do, and I used to just have "see ID" as you do, but someone convinced me of the wisdom of doing both.
The U.K. takes banking a lot more seriously than anywhere in North America, and probably more seriously than anywhere in Europe.
The tellers seem to take great pride in the U.K. at denying people service or making them fill out dozens of forms (which are no doubt copied to the parishes of all members of your family tree, out to and including your great grandparents.
Where I am, the tellers behave like McDonald's employees. "Would you like a GIC with that?"
the stupidest story yet... I signed my credit card with an infinity symbol for 1.5 years just because it was quicker than my name -- no one ever cared.
Want fraud protection? Don't lose ur card -- how simple.
The point of the signature is not to protect YOU, the card holder from fraud, it's to protect the merchant from fraud. If someone steals your card and buys things with it, ultimately it is the merchant, not YOU, who will pay for it. The merchant collects the signature to prove to the bank that YOU were at the point of sale, not a thief, so the merchant bank does not take the sale funds away from them if you cry foul. If they do not accept a valid signature from you that just means they are not losing a enough money to fraud to care one way or the other. So they are putting their asses on the line (not yours) with the signature issue.
your credit card company would not make any money.
1)the signature is an agreement to pay what you charge, nothing more. The security aspect was added on later as a 'feel good' measure.
2)They(the stores) make more money this way. it's quicker, which means more purchases.
The credit card bean counters look at this every year, they make more money not pissing off the stores then they would with more secure transactions. Now, if somebody comes up with a secure way of doing business, that doesn't slow the transaction and the customers don't mind the credit card companies would implement it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to buy him a better server, his is down right now.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
As others have noted, if you read the card holder agreement, the signature on the card accepts the terms of the that agreement. If you read your receipt, the signature on the receipt signifies that you agree to pay the retailer the sum charged. I do not think authentication is mentioned anywhere. So, this is my problem with credit cards and debit cards used as credit cards: there is no authentication at the time of purchase. I would like to see broad deployment of "smart" credit cards in the US. I am not a cryptographer, but I think a credit card purchase should depend on at least the following: the holder knowing a secret (PIN?), the card knowing a separate secret, the card issuer knowing a third secret, and an algorithm that ties the secrets together. That way, there is some hope of proving that the relationship between the three entities is valid at purchase time. The current system only works, because there is such massive indemnification (no responsibility for unauthorized purchases over 50.00). The indemnification does not keep fraud down; it only foists the cost of fraud onto the retailers who then raise their prices to cover themselves.
.02.
My
-ghostis
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
I have my pic on the front of my debit card and every single person who sees the card looks at me and compares it to the pic (also my signature is digitally imprinted on the front next to my pic) It may just be the novelty but I think people naturally react to a picture by comparing it to the real person.
Why not simply place a photo ON the credit card? This seems like an easy way to prevent unauthorized card usage. Even if it's stole, you will not match the picture.
When Ninja Gaiden came out for the XBox, I headed over to the local Wal-Mart to grab me a copy. Taking it over to the register, the upitty cashier first demanded proof that I was 17 (I was 21 at the time and have always appeared older for my age. Example: At my sister's 15th birthday dinner, when I was 13, the waitress handed me the wine list.). Upon being begrudgingly satisfied by my driver's license, we went through the purchase. When I handed him the receipt, he literally took the credit card back out of my hand and compared my signature on the back to my signature on the receipt. "Ummmm...ok, I guess it's close enough. But try to do it better next time or I won't sell it to you."
It's the closest I've ever come to outright decking a store employee. Jump through hoops to get your signature checked? Nah, just find the newly promoted manager at Hell*Mart.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
The idea is that they have the cctv pictures of your car and its number plates!
"higher prices to cover against fraud."
Doesn't work that way. Econ 101 tells us that the selling price of an item is not related to the cost of production.
At first, this sound counterintuitive, but its true.
If the market price for widgets is $100, that's all you can get for a widget is $100. It doesn't matter that it costs $1,000 to produce. You can only charge $100.
Basic market forces at work here.
I work part-time at a grocery store over the summers. We acually didn't handle the cards, the entire process was done by the custome at the machine. Many cashiers in stores anymore don't even touch the card. I think it'd be fairly easy to pass a stolen credit card at a store. The best thing to do if you card gets stolen to report it becuase 9 times out of 10 the cashier won't check the card unless it's denied.
...And if the car's been half-inched?
They have all the risks of cash, with none of the benefits of credit, with higher fees to boot.
If someone steals my CC, I'm only responsible for $50.
If someone steals my Debit, and they clean out my account...2 f'ing bad!
Use a credit card and pay it off each month. Except for the anonymity of cash, its the ideal way buy things.
No thanks
No one has ever complained.
I call bullshit. Where do you guys live that you can get away w/ this? After seeing the original prank, I tried fake signing my name in two different places, both times they called a manager and then the manager called the cops. >_<
[o]_O
When I went through orientation at Target (I used to work there, but I was usually in the backroom doing stocking) I discovered that it's not just the cashier doing the identification checking. Most Target stores are outfitted with an advanced security system that allows you to verify an ID/Signature from a secluded room in the back. They can actually zoom in and see the text on your driver's liscense if need be. Of course, this doesn't do much good if the cashier never checks for an ID in the first place, but it's just something else to think about. When you're a consumer at some of the larger chains, more people are watching you than you might think.
He's running around buying things that are under 25$... news flash, you don't NEED a signature for thing's that cheap. Hence: pay at the pump gas stations. Is he really that out of touch? Try buying 6k$ worth of furniture and let us know if they check.
I've been doing work recently with a digital signature capture system on a PDA type of device. The signatures it captures are *very* good. The weird thing though is the response time is delayed, so you don't actually see the signature as you write it. However, it captures it all, and the resulting printout has some kind of funky pressure algorithim applied to it so that harder pressed spots are darker and the whole thing has a slight smoothing applied to it.
In any case, it is impressive on the printout, just not on the screen as you do it.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Homeless guys have credit cards now?
:)
Jeez, it's bad enough that I get bugged for change out in Reading town centre, now I'll have to prepare for a barrage of 'Got any spare Visas, mate?'.
Anyway, I don't think the UK is as savvy as the grandparent makes it out to be with regards to card signatures. My own signature is absolutely terrible and varies wildly, yet I've never once been asked to prove my identity for any of the purchases I've made on a card.
Oh well, the advent of chip 'n' pin makes this all signature business redundant anyway.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Here I have seen cashiers check maybe about 20 times, in my life. Granted half of those were in the last 2 or 3 years, so maybe it is becoming SLIGHTLY more commen.
Or maybe cashiers are just confused these days when they see cash, and are just trying to remember what it is....
Think Deeply.
Used to write a giant VOID on the signature line....never once caught any flak for it.
well if they blagged a car they may as well get some gas for the trip.
When my wife and I were traveling in Sri Lanka, we saw an interesting advertisement in one of the English dailies. A bank was advertising a credit card system under which you'd receive a text message every time your credit card was used. Idea being, I suppose, that if fraud occurred the owner would learn of their impending bankrupcy instantly.
Instead, write "Ask for ID" with a Sharpie or some other good permanent ink pen. It's much easier for the cashier to compare your picture ID to you than one signature to another. However, I still find that most places only check the back of the card to see if ANYTHING is written and never compare signatures.
Actually, the big retailers seem to be enforcing this. I went out to the mall last week and bought stuff at a lot of different stores. Every single one of them checked my signature. One store even asked for I.D. I think that the big corporations are aware of the problem of identity theft, and they are enforcing the policy of checking the signature, not that it's going to do any good.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
Yep, another ignorant /. poster. Hey, bonehead, what you THINK doesn't matter when you're WRONG! Of course, the moderators who decided that you are insightful must have grass growing in their heads or something.
I have US friends who have found themselves in the UK actually having to write SEE ID on their receipts so that it matches what's on the signature strip.
Others just get refused because you aren't supposed to put anything else in that box. My card agreement is pretty specific that i'm supposed to put my signature there and i dont want to violate that.
I have never punched in my zip wrong, since I want to get my gas, not test the theory that it would cause an authorization problem.
Matching the billing zip to the card might prevent a little fraud - especially at a gas pump which has no signature or even a human attendant. I wouldn't be surprized to see more of it. Lots of places already make the clerk punch in the last four digits, to make sure the embossed number matches the magnetic number, what's another few digits?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have three cards -- two credit and one debit. I have had them all for over 2 years. I have never signed any of them, and I have never been asked to sign them. I have been asked for ID many times; which I like.
One of the biggest problems I see with credit/debit cards is when the merchants system prints the entire account number on the receipt. Most of them don't do this anymore, but there are still some that do.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I always thought this sort of thing was pretty common. My friends and I have been signing receipts with random names for years. One of my buddies always signs his name, without fail, as John Wayne.
I have a squiggle like signature but i can sign it pretty consistently. My dad's gotten it to the point where he can sign two copies of his illegible squiggle that you set on a lightbox and they line up exactly.
The motion and speed that I sign are probably close enough that a decent algorithm could compare my signature.
For all you idiots here with the "I'm only liable for $50 of fraudulent charges BS" guess what...there not fraudulent till you prove them to be. (or at least get someone at Visa to agree) I remeber the case of a FEDERAL JUDGE that had her cards stolen and used for thousands of dollars. Guess what... it took her years to get the charges cleared and her money back (yes she had to pay or face having her credit destroyed) Just because the law puts you in the right legaly doesn't mean that you can't get royally screwed.
(-1, Factually Incorrect) Standard operating procedures straight from VISA USA.
Free messageboards and more! Your girlfriend's seen myWang
The only time I've ever had my signature checked is when I was in a Strip Club in Las Vegas. Here I am, hammered out of my head and they want me to sign the damn receipt perfectly. And what was really sad is that I was a well known regular to the place. Idiots. The only time the credit card companies care is when YOU are using YOUR card to make BIG purchases. I was on vacation in Aruba when my credit card mysteriously stopped working. I called the credit card company (ever make a call from Aruba? It's $30 if your quick) and they had stopped my card from being validated because big purchases were being made using it. Cancelled the card when I got back but they're all the same way. They only care when it's *their* money. Never when it's yours. Thoalex
I have been using credit cards for almost fifteen years. I use them to purchase almost everything as it is so convienient. I usually just make a scribble mark when signing the slip. The only time that I have been scrutinized is at the Kennedy Space Center. Twice I was asked to either show ID or sign the slip again as my scribble did not match the signature on the back of the card.
Those self help systems (in the states at Price Chopper, Home Depot et cetera) always ask you to "Show your card to the cashier."
I never have. They never ask. Same thing at CompUSA and Staples.
Bottom line is that if you swipe the card, they don't ask, ever.
A lot of this does depend on your age though. My dad would ask me to use his card and get XYZ at the store. I would go and if someone asked me, I would just say that my dad asked me to get it.
Always worked, no questions asked.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
This is mostly true, however the major marketing campaing suggests otherwise...
Get your Unix fortune now!
http://usa.visa.com/business/accepting_visa/ops_ri sk_management/card_present.html
So, sign it, then add "See ID". The signature IS there for verification, and good clerks will request the ID. If they're really sticklers, then just sign the slip with the "See ID" in your signature and claim that that IS your signature!
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
In theoruy they are there for verification, and as an agreement to pay.
However, it's not worth there time to actually do so, it would cost more then it would save.
Of course, if enough people just decide to fight their own purchases they would start enforcing the signature to be stored long term.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I always write "SEE ID" on the signature line and over the course of about 5 years I'd say roughly 80% of the time I'm asked for my ID, or at least why I write that as my signature. Whether they actually compare signatures or just stare blindly not knowing what to look for, they do seem to run through the motions.
Wisest is he who knows he does not know.
On the back of all my credit cards, where the signature is supposed to be, I have written, "Ask For ID". Most of the time they don't, but I've found this to be a good measure in case your cards get lost of stolen.
In some states - like mine - it is against the law for a cashier to ask for backup ID. Never mind backwater hicks who actually want store clerks to check another form of identification. You see the signature on the back of a CC is not a security feature, and where I live it's considered an inconvenience to have clerks ask for and examine corroborating ID. Putting CID or SEEID on the back of a cradit card? How quaint.
I'm posting anonymously because I have mod points. Hopefully this works...
Some banks offer check cards with a reward program. You might be able to get airline miles or cash back (something small--0.25 to 1.00%--but still something).
Anyway, the only way you are able to get the rewards is to use the check card in credit mode (i.e. signature, not PIN).
Have to post anon since I've moderated in this area...
USAA is much more than a bank (insurance, etc.), but I guess your question is is the USAA Federal Savings Bank, technically a "bank"? My answer is that I don't know, but I think they are. I'm not sure if they count as being a Credit Union, and, if so, if that disqualifies them from being a "bank", but my instinct (which with $2 might get you a coffee from Starbucks) tells me that they are a bank.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Have to post anon since I've moderated in this area... A signature may be a written form of one's name, but it can also be defined a somewhat unique identifier given in written or even audible/etc format. Therefore, so long as a signature complies to a unique format, why not?
I'm thinking that perhaps I'll start signing my name and embed the date in every signature. Or perhaps the day of week. Then if somebody ever does try to fraud my card with a faked signature, I can say "it wasn't mine, because my signature is to sign my name with the current day of week"
A couple of years ago I was involved in developing a web store. After people had tested the site for three weeks, I tried my credit card and was rejected! When I contacted my card company they told me the card expiration date was wrong. When the developer examined his code he discovered it was reversing the month and year before asking for confirmation! This means that about 10 card processors never checked the card expiration date!
I, for one, welcome our signature-ignorant credit card overlords!
I usually don't do this, but the parent's link is dead on. It answers a lot of questions that have been flying around and is getting overlooked.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I see many people here who complain about people not checking signitures have never worked retail. You've definately never been a manager or small business owner. The signitures are totally useless. They get stored for 7 years (at least in my state, I believe others are higher) and then burned. Fradulent charge happens, I still have the money. The CC company usually pays the individual back. In worst case scenarios (AMEX), the company asks for 50% of the charge back.
You see, you card is not valid without a signature. I would have refused your card and if you were a big enough ass not give it back and refuse any other cards that did not have a signature. I had district managers back me up on that. I even convinced one bank to tell me to keep the card. It is fraudulent to use a credit card without signing it.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
From the article:
"For instance, what if my server sucks?"
Then when you get get slashdotted, hard.
Too bad Mirrordot only caches the first page of the site. I'd like to see the other pages, but again, slashdotted.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ok I have only two things to say about this topic.
The First kinda ticks me off. I go to a store and buy something, then the cashier takes my credit card and starts squinting at the back and compairing it to the recipt I just signed. It kinda makes me wonder, does this silly part time 17 year old that works at walmart really have the training to accuratly make decisions regarding my identify from my signiture... Are they all moonlighting as signiture analysts? Its just stupid. If anyone questioned my sig, I would be pretty pissed.
The second is that most either don't check or don't care, or like I mentioned above are no qualified to really make these kind of decisions anyway. An example of this is when I was in high school, my mom wanted me to pick something up for her at the store, so she just gave me her credit card. I was in my teens and didn't think it would work, so she wrote a note and said to call if there was a problem. Well I am not sure howmany teenagers have a gold card, but the cashier didn't care. I signed my own name, they checked and did say a thing.... So as a security feature, pretty useless.
I could see someone inspecting the signiture if you were buying some big ticket item like an engagement ring or a car or something, but on 99.9% of items it is a waste of time.
Anyway thats my 2 cents...
mysev
well if they blagged a car they may as well get some gas for the trip.
Hey you two, speak English! This is America, damn it ;)
--
I wasn't going to post anonymously but figured the Anti-American Americans would get me.
I've signed *traffic tickets* as "I refuse to appear"...
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
All of you you See ID fanatics get out of my lane you are wasting my time. And doubly so for those that insist on calling a manager over or some of the other dumb crap people have done in these postings. If you can't simply follow the rules for making a transaction (ie sign card, sign recipt) Then please don't shop or possibly just wear a hat that says Im an a** hole so I don't get behind you in line. I mean I could write "check for birth marck on ass" The clerk doesn't need to do it thats not how the card works. I bet you are all the same people that have a coupon that says internet only and think "Hey they will accept this at the store".
In college, I worked in the electronics dept. of a big dept. store chain on the U.S. west coast. One day I helped a (seemingly) nice guy buy about $300 worth of car stereo equipment. He paid with a credit card. A couple weeks later, he came back and bought a $500 camcorder, also with a credit card. A couple weeks after that, I get a message that the head of corporate security wants me to call her. I worked the night shift, so I couldn't get ahold of her. But a couple days later, I see the guy's picture on the front page of the local paper. Turns out he had murdered an old guy a few states over and took his credit cards. I checked signatures and ID after that.
someone may want to mirror this baby...
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/
Maybe you don't have any real money?
It could be what they're thinking.. I know I feel stupid when I forget to hit the ATM and have to charge something like toothpaste.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
In the signature panel of my card I wrote SEE PHOTO ID in large block letters. On average I'm asked about 20% of the time for my ID. I always thank the person asking. The other 80% of the time I usually make some wise ass remark to the cashier to show that I am displeased. I'm not sure it actually helps but at least I feel better about it.
Actually, I have seen such requests. I worked for six years at a restarant; from 12-3, AM and PM, the place was a frantic madhouse. (How bad? I went into IT and dropped almost twenty percent off my blood pressure.)
During the peak times, we stopped asking people to sign credit card slips, and just handed them their copy blank. If asked about it, we would explain to them (while talking to the next customer and screaming at the line cooks-- if you couldn't multitask, you didn't survive day one) that the extra six seconds per person for a signature just weren't worth the time, when we were sending a hundred people an hour past the register, and it was "all digital anyway".
We had two disputed charges in the six years I was there. One was when someone who ordered the same thing two days in a row (well, nights-- just after the bars closed), and thought the second was a duplicate charge; the second really was a stolen card. Both times, the store just absorbed the loss rather than produce the unsigned slip-- I think the owner told the CC company those two slips had been lost. Total loss in six years: $13.09. Increase in possible peak customer volume: about 15%. Worth it? Hell, yeah!
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Wrong. Debit charges placed at POS (point of sale) where you type your pin, you are NOT charged ATM fees. Do you even have a checking account?
I have a USBank Debit/Check Card and use it all the time as a credit card. When I signed up for the service a couple of years ago, the USBank Rep told me to always hit "credit" at businesses when buying or I would be charged the standard "out of network ATM Processing fee" just like if I was using an ATM machine that wasn't USBank branded.
I was in China 2 weeks ago, and my co-worker tried to pay for our dinner with his credit card. The waiter came back after my co-worker signed the bill, and turned over his card, which had "CHECK ID" written in block letters on the back of it. The waiter would not let us go until my co-worker wrote "CHECK ID" in block letters on the signature line of our bill.
I've had my card's service "interrupted" twice because of suspicious activity. The first time, it prevented someone from charging thousands of dollars to my account, so the second time, I wasn't at all upset that it had been interrupted even though the activity was perfectly normal.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Personal photos on credit cards- it's been done and works very effectively. If a criminal ever did get a hold of a photo card, he would be at least more weary of using it.
Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise
60% of all cards arent signed at all 10% have 'see id' on the back 99% of employees/cashiers dont check As someone who runs credit cards all day i can tell you they are rampantly insecure, people never get carded for a form of id at all, and as shown by this, can really sign anything. Just deal in cash, accepted everywhere and 0 threat of id theft.
Like the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -Pyrotic
In the article he says that Circuit City employees make comission, they don't.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
here is the text from your link:
Step one is to ensure that the CARD MUST BE SIGNED in order to ensure that the cardholder has agreed to VISA's policies. So again, what was I wrong about?
The original purpose of a signed credit card receipt was not necessarily to prevent a thief from making the purchase. It was to identify the person making the purchase.
Whether on the spot, or in court months later, it would be provable that the thief whose image is on the store's video tape was not who they claimed to be - thus allowing conviction on credit card fraud charges. Conversely, this crosscheck also prevents people from claiming credit card theft to avoid paying for purchases.
The fact that vendors and cardholders don't always practice due diligence is the only reason why there are unconvicted criminals who make a living in this way. The wanted poster really should make a comeback, posted outside the stores where the crime was committed. Imagine someone coming back to thier favorite scamming spot, only to see a 8-1/2x11 with the security camera picture... and a lot of curious shoppers, including the two or three heading for the security desk.
*sigh* the store would probably be sued for "causing mental distress". Wouldn't want suspected criminals to be treated with suspicion. No sirree.
Pavlov's Dog ate the bell, and now he's barking at Schroedinger's cat all the time... -Me
Linux must certainly be meant just for hobby because it comes with thousands of these little tools that just do their jobs without much in the rain. But thats not important right now.
I like to think that i haven't had the misfortune to meet you mr. President!
http://r00tshell.com/slash_cache/zug/index.html
My first switch (debit card, now called maestro) card had my photo on it. It was issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1994. It was great. Only people who looked like me could use it ... I was [and am] bearded ... which cuts dramatically the number of crims that could use my card!
The thing is in about 1998 the RBoS stopped using photo-printed debit cards. None of the high street banks use this extremely simple method of deterring card fraud.
In fact, I would like a card with my photo printed on, with a copy stored digitally [either on the card or on a database] too for comparison. This seems a simple method of deterring elementary level criminals.
Whilst the photo couldn't be checked in a lot of independent stores (like my own) it could easily be integrated into the systems of most chain stores - particularly as they already have colour screens on their tills.
Why don't banks use photos??
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I used to sign my name perfectly before I came to the States. Years after years, as no one seems to check it, right now my signatures came in indefinite forms. Every once a while, when I go back to my country, I was asked to re-sign my signature every time I shopped. I was even once asked to re-sign for FOUR times until the clerk is satisfied. I singed so slowly that I felt like she was watching and learning how I signed it...
I write in "SEE ID" and then my signature next to it on my credit cars. I then say thank you to the cashiers who check my ID. Check your Credit/Debit card Terms. Under many of them, if you write "See ID", "CID" or a similar form, you have total liability for any purchases if the card is stolen.
What's the problem here? I live in the southern U.S. and I could understand them fine.... (and I've never been to the UK...)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Whenever I go somewhere and they have a digital signing space I always draw faces or cartoons or just random words and stuff. Signatures really don't amount to anything I dont think, so long as somebody marked the paper at some point. All my cards have SEE ID written on the back of them. Most of time people do ask to see it, but not always.
If a million monkeys randomly pounded on keyboards, they would all log into AOL.
THANK YOU
Ender,
If you ask, you can get an ATM card that is not a debit card, that way you can get cash with your PIN, but a theif could not start "charging" things with your money, if your card is ever lost or stolen.
Anyway, BoA's procedure is simple. A little longer than necessary, but simple. You notify an agency (who notifies two others) that the card number is being misused. You then spend 30 minutes convincing a Bank of America teller that you are who you are (and that's actually admirable security). The card is then locked down. You then talk to a third person about the disputed charges, and they then send you a report card you need to fill in.
Wha's good about a process as long and complex as that? Simple. They HAVE a process. Americans seem to assume that money is there to be stolen, so there are usually no procedures of any kind at all. No safety checks, no verification. The FBI openly say they won't touch online fraud that is worth less than something like $15,000. Which means that they don't give a damn about anything that happens to people, just corporations.
America has nothing similar to the Data Protection Act. The retention of data that could be misused or abused is therefore entirely OK. With nobody taking responsibility for dealing with online fraud and identity theft, there's zero incentive to NOT put such data at risk.
This is just my personal opinion, but in cases of identity theft, I'd argue that those responsible for the safekeeping of the data are just as criminally culpable as the thief. If irresponsible behaviour and criminal negligence really was regarded as criminal, we might see some major improvements.
There was a documentary a few years back, on Russian crackers. Apparently, major banks TO THIS DAY have unsecured dial-in lines that directly access the bank's computers. By unsecured, they made it clear that this included no passwords or other authentication of any kind. Apparently, banks lose a good few million on a yearly basis to skript-kiddies with a war-dialler.
This is a broken, defective system. That is the only way to describe it. Personal information needs better protection, and critical systems need hefty security. In general, this isn't happening.
On security, I give America a grade of F-.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(May be a little out of context. Couldn't find an old thread that was similar.)
I am exposing my ignorance here...
I was under the impression that the only reason a card holder's signature is ever checked is to protect the creditor when that card holder claims that they never made the purchase in question. In other words, your signature is only checked if you try to get out of paying for a purchase. It is not intended, specifically, to protect the card holder from fraudulent use.
However, it is the cashier's, waitron's, etc. responsibility to make sure the signature looks valid enough that it can act as proof that you were involved in the purchase. Otherwise the creditor may withhold the cash. They shouldn't let Bill the Cat scribbles through unless that is what is on your card.
If you count the cost of housing. Nothing is safe from inflation. If you really want to save long term buy gold and/or silver. It will always be worth something. Even when this country's monetary value goes into the crapper. And it will.... http://www.321gold.com
The requirement for fraud is, well, intent to defraud. IANAL, but my father was and one of his favorite bits of legal trivia was thus:
I can sign your name if you tell me I can, so there is no fraud if I sign your name without fraudlent intent.
Your signature doesn't have to be related to your name in any way; as long as it is something you use as your signature its valid. This goes back to illiterate persons "making their mark" to sign documents. You don't even have "a signature" you have as many signatures as you want to. For instance I have an added glyph I use on some kinds of documents, it cannot be represented in any current character set and it will botch any OCR scan. It has its uses... but it only shows up on some things.
The "signature card" on a bank account and the place to sign on the back of a credit card exist solely to act as arbiters; they exist only to define what your signature is on that account. In this respect the signatures involved are simple, anonymous key matching operations.
I can sign my name to where yours should be, but if I do so with the intent to pass-off and say that what I wrote is supposed to be your signature, it doesn't matter that the letters spell out my name, by presenting the document as something signed by you (the authorized party etc) I am engaged in fraud.
If you mean to defraud it is fraud.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Have they changed the material on the back of cards recently? Last year I got a new slew of cards (they all expired in the same month of the same year somehow) and the one I use the most I signed in regular blue ballpoint pen like the previous one. That actually rubbed off the back of the card in less than 4 months. So I figured alright I just won't sign it again because you're only supposed to sign it once, right? Well I had to go get my passport renewed and one payment option for at least one portion of the passport is a credit card, and since I didn't have $90 in cash on me that day it seemed like a viable option. When I handed it to the lady she looked at the back and explained that she couldn't accept it because it wasn't signed. I explained that I had previously signed it and that it had rubbed off over time. She then handed me a fat black marker and told me she would accept it if i signed it for her again, which needing my passport I of course did. Now that is also rubbing off the back of the card and it just looks like a large black blob of ink more or less. I do get more people that ask to check my ID though, specially at electronic stores. No restaurants have cared yet though.
You've done this before, haven't you? Go on, admit it! :)
Two years ago, I began signing documents with a simple graphic that my friends call "the booby lady", a line drawing of a naked (and extremely busty) female form, nipples included. Since then, I've co-signed a bank loan, signed a lease, gotten a new driver's license, and signed innumerable credit card statements and other documents. I've only had about a dozen experiences over these past two years when the signature-requester even noticed that my signature is odd (nevermind that I always sign documents sideways), and only a handful of these make any kind of verbal acknowledgement.
My new signature has only been challenged twice, and both were employers: the first (which was my employer during the signature change) apparently got a complaint from a female employee in human resources, noticed that my signature at hire was different from my current one, and told me to "print my name instead of using my signature" if I needed to sign anything for them in the future. The second (my current employer) simply wanted some official documentation that this was my legal signature before they hired me, so I went over to the DMV and got a new driver's license with nothing more than a double-take from the employee that watched me sign the license.
So not only can you sign anything you like any way you like, as very few people (less than 5%) will even bother to check that it matches, but also, as far as I can tell, *no one* will prevent you from legally changing your signature to something completely nonverbal and nonsensical.
I'm a Canadian currently in Australia for a year. This is one of the things I noticed here - in Australia, they actually do check the signature on the back of your card, almost every single time. One of my cards has a really blurry signature from my wallet and I get suspicious stares about it all the time.
In Canada, they never check the signature. Ever, ever. The only places that might check it is the huge chains like Wal-Mart that (I assume) have a corporate policy to do so. But even they hardly do.
In foresnic handwriting analysis, its not about the words but the letters. Look how the letters all look to be writen by the same person. Each K looks the same and each D and so on. It is not the letters but the loops. Not that anybody knows that to check.
I think I make more out of the bank shares that I own than I do out of the same amount of money in their accounts.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/ucc.table.html governs credit card transactions as well as checks, loans, etc., and defines a signature as ... a signature may be made (i) manually or by means of a device or machine, and (ii) by the use of any name, including a trade or assumed name, or by a word, mark, or symbol executed or adopted by a person with present intention to authenticate a writing. (UCC 3-401). A
writing is further defined as ... printing, typewriting, or any other intentional reduction to tangible form (UCC 1-201).
Any mark, whether or not it is your actual name in your own handwriting, constitutes a valid signature. You can sign your name, someone else's name, an X, or draw cute pictures - all are legal and valid. Even the bits tranferred on those touch sensitive screens would be a 'reduction to tangible form', as long as you intended it to be your signature.
Under these definitions, any of the 'prank' signatures that the author signed are in fact legal, valid signatures.
Convincing the average (err, below average) store clerk that the words 'Not Authorized' or 'Daffy Duck' are your signature is quite a different matter.
I have been doing this for a couple years now. The person will ask me to sign my name on the receipt and I just stand there and doodle.
The funny thing is that one time I went to Best Buy and did that, I just stood there drawing smiley faces and lines and things. Finally the cashier stopped me and said "I think that will do" Irregardless of whether or not that was my signature. Thanks guys.
I write SEE ID on the back of my card, because Michigan law is such that if you sign it, they cant ask for your ID they can only compare signatures. Or so my Manager at JCPennys told me.
Even so, with SEE ID on the back, maybe two people this year have asked for my ID. I keep all my old licenses, so I ask "Which one?" And then proceed to hand them the expired one.
Keep in mind this isnt the fault of the Credit companies. Its the fault of the retail industry.
A little research will find lots of good savings rates these days - 3.25% at http://www.emigrantdirect.com/ ..and inflation as of Jan 2005 is 2.97%
Yes, I am a big enough ass that if the clerk at the store doesn't even look at me during a rather large transaction, never speaks to me and asks me as I'm leaving to check the ID on the card that I've already put back in my wallet that I don't hand it back.
You have two choices at that point: Detain me (illegally) for trying to walk out with merchandise that I have a valid receipt for, or complete a void on that sale before I hit the door and shop somewhere else. Either way the clerk needs to at least check the card at the time of the sale.
The signature is there for your protection, but *after* the fact. If you challenge a purchase later, the original receipt is compared to your signature, and you can theoretically argue that if it doesn't look like your signature, you didn't authorize the purchase.
(That's presuming there aren't other factors that suggest that you really did make the purchase. Like security cameras. Or physically owning the item in question.)
Of course, it's in the merchants' best interests to check your signature, cause it's their loss if you challenge a purchase.
On the other hand, out West we now have systems where you can charge a small purchase (under $50, I guess) without even signing. Starbucks and Qdoba both have this, and some McDonald'ses.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
All the best English slang comes from black people and Brits... the rest of us just take the hand-me-downs when they're done using them.
It's awfully late in the discussion, but did you know that your credit card company NEVER recieves those signed pieces of paper? They probably sit someplace in the annals of your local store for years and then are finally destroyed. Those things you sign are contracts that you agree that you are charging something. They'll only come up if you dispute that you never purchased something. Then they'll go down to the basement, dig out that piece of paper, and then that's when you give up or claim it's not your signature.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
A lot of people have commented about the clerks flipping the card over and "looking" at the signature, but not really reading it. As someone who runs about 100 credit cards a day, I flip every single one over- and don't glance at that. It is much easier to just quickly flip it over to locate the magnetic strip, then to extrapolate the location of the strip by looking at the front of the card. I don't bother comparing the signatures or anysuch, because nobody where I work cares. If I made a hassle about it, my managers wouldn't back me up at all, so why bother.
If it helps any (a bit late, I'm sure), I'm a female gamer geek who loves space flight sims, including Wing Commander. But that wasn't me!
i am a soviet space shuttle
Essentially, they're using racial profiling as their primary technique, the signature check is just a backup. If you never see them check the signature, the odds are good that you're a white male (and if you're hanging around slashdot...).
Anyway, there's your answer. Q: What will it take to get them to check your credit card signature? A: Be a black woman.
A few weeks ago, my father took my car into the garage for an oilchange and some minor maintenance that it needed. I had told him to just have it put on my account there (Figured I had one, since I bought the car there...) The wouldn't let me leave without paying. when he pointed out that I would be in the next morning to pay on CC, and they said if he knew my CC# they could pass the transaction. It was my understanding that anyone other than myself using my CC would be fraud.
That appears to be a credit union primarily for employees of USAA, whereas USAA is for members of the armed services and their immediate family. According to their membership page, "employees of Americhem Company, International Business Machines and Otis Elevator Company, who work in any United Services Automobile Association Building or field office" are also eligible, as are their immediate family. However, since they do not mention armed service personnel, this differs quite a bit from USAA Federal Savings Bank, which I still suspect is actually a "bank".
However, you have answered one long-standing question of mine. USAA apparently stands for "United Services Automobile Association" (this information is not readily found at USAA.com).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I work in fraud prevention at Discover card, if a card is swiped, we can tell the name on the card, exp date, CID, what design the card had, and if there was a fake name associated with the card. Theres even more in that strip, but we do not use all of it yet....
... I will gut your entrails with my hook...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is if the stockmarket is up wise boy.
And even bonds have risks, US bonds may become trash bonds if the US economy collapses under the weight of public deficit (a la Argentina).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Unless you are sick or dixlexic, getting a reproduceable signature is not rocket science.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
that's not in your name is still fraud. If you sign your own name, that's fraud in the 2nd degree.