What is an electronic signature?

The definition is deliberately wide

Statutes describe a function rather than a technology. The Australian Electronic Transactions Act asks whether a method identified the person and indicated their intention, and whether it was as reliable as appropriate for the purpose. The United States ESIGN Act reaches the same place through a definition of an electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and executed with intent to sign. Neither one names a file format or a vendor, and that is on purpose: a rule written around fax machines in 1998 would have aged badly. The consequence is that almost anything can be a signature, and the interesting question moves to evidence.

The mark is the smallest part

Two people can produce identical typed names, and an uploaded image can be lifted from any earlier document. What separates a signature you can rely on from one you cannot is everything recorded around it: which address opened the link, what identity check was passed, when each step happened, and which exact file was on screen at the time. Signing software exists mostly to capture that context and bind it to the mark. When a page describes a signature as strong or weak, it is almost always describing the surrounding record rather than the squiggle.

Consent comes before the signature

Most regimes expect the signer to have agreed to transact electronically, and consumer facing rules make that explicit. In practice that means a short statement shown before signing, recorded with a version, so a year later you can show not just that somebody consented but what they consented to. A signing flow that skips it saves one click and gives up a piece of evidence that is awkward to reconstruct afterwards. The same logic applies to the copy the signer keeps: a record they can retain and reproduce is part of what makes the signature effective.

Common mistakes worth avoiding

Pasting an image of a signature into a Word file and mailing it, which produces a document anybody can edit and a signature anybody can reuse. Signing a scan of a scan until the text is unreadable. Sending the same link to a shared inbox, so the record shows an address rather than a person. Asking for a signature on a page nobody read, then wondering what the signer saw. Each of these is cheap to fix at the moment of sending and expensive to argue about later, which is the general shape of signing problems.

How the mark is captured here

The signer either draws in the browser or types their name, which is rendered onto a canvas, and either way the result is stored as a PNG with the method recorded in the signed event. One drawn mark fills every signature, initials and block spot on the document at once. Ten field types are available to the sender, of which signature, initials, date signed, name and the signature block are filled by the signer. The date line is stamped from the signing time rather than typed, so it cannot disagree with the audit trail.

What to keep once everyone has signed

Two artefacts matter afterwards and they are not the same thing. The first is the finished document, which every party should receive rather than being told it is available somewhere. The second is the record of how it was signed, which is what answers a challenge years later: who was invited, which check they passed, when each event happened, and which version of the file was on screen. Statutes that talk about retention are pointing at both, since a record you cannot reproduce accurately does not satisfy a retention rule. The common failure is treating the sending mailbox as the archive. Mailboxes get cleaned, staff leave, and the thread that proves consent disappears with the account. Storing the completed file and its evidence somewhere the business controls, with a naming scheme somebody else could follow, costs nothing at the time and is the difference between an argument and a document.

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