A Prank to Remember: Do Signatures Matter?
In terms of credit card signatures, one would hope that the answer is yes. Unfortunately, the answer may very well be no!
I’ve been following the shenanigans of fellow blogger, John Hargrave at www.zug.com/pranks/credit for a little while. If you’re not familiar with his credit card prank, it’s actually quite funny – though a little scary on the afterthought – and you should definitely check it out!
John wanted to see just how much his signature was actually needed on credit card purchases. He started off small, with just his signature only a little crazy. Then he moved into things like X’s and a matrix (literally, a matrix chart). It still didn’t make an impression on the employee taking the receipt and it clearly didn’t matter to his credit company because the charges kept showing up.
He decided to take this to the next level and madness ensued. His signatures became more and more ridiculous, yet no matter how they were, no one said a word and his credit card company never called. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous, he signed his name as Mariah Carey, Shamu (complete with a caricature of the whale next to the name), and “John” in Egyptian which amounted to a snake, bird, and caterpillar being drawn on the receipt.
But, his antics got me thinking. Is this really the case? Surely our credit card companies that spout numerous advertising campaigns on how they work day and night to protect us would realize that I’m not Shamu. Surely, they wouldn’t post a receipt that says “I found this in the trash can” complete with pictorial confirmation.
So, I tried it for myself.
It’s rare that I have to sign physical receipts anymore. In this day and age we have those nifty electronic signature pads that barely register a signature anyway. So, my first test with this was to borrow an idea from John. I made a purchase and used my credit card, then when I was requested to sign I wrote “NOT AUTHORIZED”. I’m guessing that the signature doesn’t show up on their screen because the clerk didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Thus I waited. As it turns out, I waited in vain because my credit card company never called.
I called them instead.
The customer service rep and I had a nice chat, in which she informed me that they don’t actually verify every signature. The only time they do is when the transaction creates a red flag in the system and then they take a look. That’s interesting! I never knew that. She then proceeded to tell me that it was the consumer’s responsibility to report any fraudulent activity within two billing cycles. Well, I knew that of course, but I wondered aloud why it was credit card companies professed to be looking out for our security when they clearly weren’t. She seemed confused by the question; in fact I know she was because she asked me to clarify my question. So, I politely pointed out several of their ads that I had seen and again asked what exactly it was they did to prevent fraudulent activity. She hung up on me.
I continued my little experiment with another card, repeating the above scenario. This time I got a call from my credit card company.
“Yes, we just wanted to verify that this was your signature.”
“What does it say?”
“Not authorized.”
“Yes, that’s my signature.”
“Super, we’ll just put this right through. Have a great day.”
Needless to say, I was a little surprised. That’s it? That’s all it takes to get a charge pushed through? And how exactly is ‘not authorized’ a signature?
I decided to try another card, but the more I kept going, the more I agreed with John. None of these security measures that credit card companies have put in place seem to be that secure. How are we to protect ourselves then? Forging on (no pun intended) I did the same thing as the two previous attempts; only this time I had a pretty perceptive clerk. When I signed with ‘NOT AUTHORIZED’ he was a little concerned. He told me I couldn’t sign it that way, it had to be my name. I smiled and told him my credit card company has this signature on file and that it is a safety measure that I put in place to help prevent theft of my card. Anything else and they know to call me.
He stared at me blankly for a minute and then asked if we could really do that. I nodded and finished my transaction. He was still pondering my response when I left. I’m guessing he contacted his manager about it because I got a phone call from them not too long after (it was one of those places that you have to give your phone number first) and the manager confidently proclaimed that he had called my credit card company and verified that there was, in fact, no such provision to have me sign with ‘not authorized’ and that they would need me to return and sign with a valid signature or he would call the police and press charges for shoplifting. I happily returned to the store and signed.
At first I wondered if John over at Zug was pulling our legs, surely the credit card company would care if you aren’t signing your own name. But, after my conversation with the ever helpful customer service department, I began to realize the genius of John’s idea: You can’t depend on your credit card companies for all of your security needs.
In the credit card company’s defense, they do have thousands of customers and it does seem a little ridiculous to expect them to compare signatures for every single transaction. However, I do think there ought to be safeguards in place to catch blatant signature discrepancies. ‘Not Authorized’ should send a red flag up in the system some where, don’t you think?
Thanks to John Hargrave at Zug for starting this wonderful idea! It’s a great way to make people aware that credit card security is important because signatures aren’t a fail-safe anymore!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Update: Hi Diggers!
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I think the purpose of the signatures is for the Credit card accepting merchants benefit in deciding whether the person signing in the receipt is the same as the person who signed the credit card. I think its a weak security feature that relies on the fact that someone’s signature is hard to forge. If I were a merchant and I noticed signatures that don’t match, I would reject the transaction and not let you pay for the merchandise with this signature because I wouldn’t trust that you are actually the owner of the card. Just my 2 cents.
The dumbest part is when you give them an unsigned card and they make you sign it in front of them to compare to the signature…all without checking the ID.
I wrote ‘ask for ID’ on my cards but no one asks for it. I would rather have someone request ID than tell me sign a blank card to match the signature I just put on a receipt. How is THAT safe?
My husband signs all his receipts as Bon jovi or mickey mouse. Nobody has ever checked his signature and we’ve never gotten a call from our credit card company or our banks.
Even when they do ask for ID they only check to make sure the names match, no one ever looks to see if the faces match. Umm… If I stole someone’s credit card what makes you think I don’t also have their ID?
The local market in our town has started to ask to see your ID to match you card. Though this has no relation to the credit companies perhaps that is where the real security is exercised, at the POS.
I remember some friends and I always doing this years ago, we’d take pictures of the receipts to see who had the most absurd signature pass through. Some of the funniest being fortune cookie phrases that were written very clearly and covered the lower third of the receipt. Overall, we found that restaurants were the worst offenders as to not questioning, and most of the times rather than question, if they noticed it, they’d just snicker and continue about their day.
Basically, the signature panel is not for your security, it’s for the CC company’s security, and if they don’t want to spend the resources to validate when available or require their merchants to, it’s a business decision. As long as that signature considerably doesn’t match what’s on file, the CC company can be held liable for any fraudulent charges and while they’ll do a chargeback of their merchants for the charges, it becomes their problem to do so. These days, the fraudsters who use scraped/copied or stolen CCs offline are a miniscule percentage of those that’d just use/sell them online, the risk vs. reward is too high for the criminals.