Posted by Carrie Conyers on 1/4/07 12:41am
Msg #168958

electronic secure notary seal

Does anyone know how this is suppost to work?? Online signings?? I'm in California and have wrote to the Sec of State requesting a online certif. to purchase a stamp but don't have a clue how to use it. Any input please

Reply by Gerry_VT on 1/4/07 2:46am
Msg #168961

I can't tell you about California in particular, but I can give you some general comments.

1. An "electronic secure notary seal" is really a digital signature. That is, it's a number.

2. To check the digital signature, the document is reprocessed by the computer, and the computer checks that the result is the same as when the document was originally signed. This means that once a document is printed on paper, it can't be checked anymore.

3. Since digital signatures can't be checked unless the document is still in digital form, the county clerk who will record the document must be equipped to receive and check digital documents. If your county clerk can't do that, forget about it.

4. No universal system has been adopted. If you sign up for some system, you may find that by the time business starts to build up, the system you spent money on loses out to some competitor, and you have to sign up with whoever wins the competion. Just like VHS versus Betamax, if you remember that far back.

Reply by Gerry_VT on 1/4/07 3:10am
Msg #168963

Re: electronic secure notary seal & Notary Rotary

When I did a Google search, I found that Notary Rotary sells an "Electronic Secure Notary Seal" for California, perfect for including in electronic documents. It makes no mention of digital cryptographic signatures. Perhaps this is just a picture of the seal? If so, the notary who owns such a thing should take great care to keep it secure. Once it has been included in a document, the document should be printed and only the printed version should leave the notary's control, not the electronic version, because the picture of the seal could easily be copied from one document to another. I have no idea whether putting a picture of a seal in a document, then printing it, then signing the paper with a pen is in accord with California law or not.