May 01 2007
Signature Stamp v. Digital Signature
Earlier today I posted about a tutorial demonstrating how to use create a signature stamp on a document. Often I hear people refer to stamps such as these as digital signatures. In reality, however, these signature stamps are not digital signatures.
A digital signature is actually something much more. Digital signatures use encryption to authenticate a document. The ABA has a good article on digital signatures and how they work.
The key thing to remember is that a digital signature has nothing to do with how you sign your name. Instead, it is a method to authenticate that a document came from you. A signature stamp, on the other hand, allows you to apply your physical signature to an electronic document in the same manner that you could stamp a piece of paper with a stamp created from your signature. In both instances, the stamp does not prove that the document came from you. Instead, it just proves that the document came from someone with possession of your signature stamp.
