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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."
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.
.. 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.
My signature is basically a W with a line after.
Wow! Please to meet you Mr. President!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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 : )
Yes, I learned a long time ago that the best approach is to make my signature a completely uninteligable squiggle.
It's hard to duplicate, and no one can ever tell me that I didn't sign my entire name. the first time a purchased a home, I had a legible signature and they made me sign MY FULL NAME like eleventy billion times.
Now, I just squiggle, and if they say that isn't my full name, I say, "yes it is... Can't you read?"
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
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.
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.
There you go, ruining a perfectly good whine-fest with these tacky "facts."
I'm always astonished how poorly most digitizers work (Target, Best Buy being the worst I usually run into), with results that only vaguely look like my signature.
It could be worse, when companies like UPS started doing this, the quality and resolution was *terrible*. Back in 1997 or so, my brother sent me a package which I signed for, and they were advertising the "you can track your package online, and even see who signed for it." The resulting signature was so funny, I kept it. (Before you flame me for posting my signature, look at the actual image).
I bet you've been waiting 8 years for a Slashdot article that allows you to post that image, how does it finally feel?
It could be worse, when companies like UPS started doing this, the quality and resolution was *terrible*. [...] The resulting signature was so funny, I kept it. (Before you flame me for posting my signature, look at the actual image).
If you squint your eyes just right you can make it out! Bad idea to post your signature, Mr. ;,!.'',_!.