Safer than Paper And the experts are certain that digital verification is going to be much more secure than human scrawls on paper. Weiss compares the process to the relatively low-tech magnetic stripe everyone carries around on bank and credit cards, where special identifying information is encoded in the stripe and then verified by use of a password. The identifying information in a digital signature is embedded in a computer file sent to you on a disk for installation with your computer s browser. Once you send an e-mail or document electronically, the recipient has to have the technology to verify the sender is really you. The encryption also guarantees that the document has not been doctored change even one comma, and the transaction will be refused.
Some systems rely on a third party a security company to provide trusted certification authority.
We do that cross-match, Weiss says. For instance, an airline pilot renewing his aviation license with the Federal Aviation Administration is required to fill out several signed and notarized documents. With a digital signature verified by a security company, however, the pilot can do it all online. Companies selling digital signatures have moved forward even without federal laws regulating the new service. On Capitol Hill, some critics of the E-SIGN movement fear that consumer protections now in place for paper transactions will be weakened or lost.