Fraud fears over digital signatures

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Researchers at the University of Derby studied 150 signatures created with different types of pen and compared them to the end result when the document is fed into a scanner.

Dr Ian Turner, a lecturer in forensic science, and final year student Nazia Mehrban found that the two signatures can differ in as many as six ways, depending on the type of pen used.

Dr Turner said: "The forgery of signatures is a problem in today's society and as a result of technological advancement the introduction of digital signatures has become increasingly popular on UK documents such as driving licences and passports.

"The differences found between original and digital signatures has implications on such documents.

"The significance of the ink type used to create some documents which employ digital signatures has been shown and it is possible that by using a specific pen type, the number of differences found can be dramatically reduced."

Miss Mehrban has already presented her work to the European Union and plans to undertake further research.

She said: "This study shows a statistically-significant difference between original and digitally-scanned signatures.

"These statistical differences show that digital signatures may not be a true representation of an original and that further investigation is needed."