Blog: e-signatures, evidence and the law, stated plainly
What electronic signatures are, what the law says with article numbers, how signing flows work, and the honest boundaries of what a signing service can claim.
The product, stated plainly
What is Signattio? E-signatures with tamper-evident evidence
Signattio is an electronic signature service. You send a PDF out for signature; your signers identify themselves and sign in a browser; you get back a sealed document with its evidence attached — and a public way for anyone to check all of it.
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Boundaries, stated plainly
What Signattio is not — and why that matters before you sign
The fastest way to evaluate an e-signature service is to ask what it refuses to claim. Here is the list for this one, with the reasons attached.
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The flow, end to end
How Signattio works: from draft to verifiable PDF
One envelope goes through five stages — send, identify, sign, seal, verify. Here is each stage and what it leaves behind.
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For the people building
The Signattio API: envelopes in, sealed evidence out
The API is the same engine the dashboard uses, over JSON: you drive envelopes from your backend, and everything the product produces — the PAdES seal, the timestamps, the audit chain — comes out the same as if it had been sent by hand.
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Definition, stated plainly
What is an electronic signature? The definition that counts
An electronic signature is, in law, any data in electronic form that a signatory uses to sign — attached to, or logically associated with, what is being signed. That breadth is the point of the definition, and the source of most confusion about it.
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Terminology, untangled
Electronic signature vs digital signature: which is which
Vendors use 'electronic' and 'digital' interchangeably, and the confusion is baked in. The two terms name different layers: one is legal, the other is cryptographic.
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The law, stated plainly
Are electronic signatures legally binding? Yes — here are the articles
Yes. In the EU, the US and every major market that has adopted either model, an electronic signature cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic — and the rule is written in numbered articles, not in vendor copy.
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Standard, named precisely
PAdES explained: the PDF signature profile, level by level
PAdES — PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures — is the European profile (ETSI EN 319 142-1) for cryptographic signatures embedded in PDF files, with four baseline levels that determine how long the proof survives.
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Evidence, explained mechanically
The hash-chained audit trail: how tamper-evidence actually works
A signing ceremony produces a story — who was asked, how they proved identity, what they signed. The audit trail keeps that story, and the hash chain is what stops anyone from rewriting it afterwards.
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Workflow, step by step
Sign a PDF and email it: what holds up and what does not
Yes, you can sign a PDF and email it — in both the EU and the US the law refuses to treat a signature as invalid merely because it is electronic. The question that actually matters is what the emailed file can prove about itself.
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Identity, level by level
OTP identity verification: what a one-time code actually proves
Before a signer can sign, they pass an identity step — most often a one-time password (OTP) sent to their email or phone. What that check proves, and what it deliberately does not, is worth understanding before you choose a level for your envelope.
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Records, kept honestly
How long to keep signed contracts and their evidence
A signed contract is a record you must be able to produce, intact, for as long as the deal can come back to life — a dispute, an audit, a tax inquiry. Here is how long that realistically is, and what exactly you should be keeping.
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The copy, examined
Is a scanned signature legally binding? What the scan proves
Yes — in the EU, the US and the UK a scanned signature can carry legal weight — but a scan is a picture of a signature, not the record of one. What the picture cannot show is exactly what disputes turn on.
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Alternatives, by the numbers
DocuSign alternative: what to compare before you switch
DocuSign is the reference product; 'alternative' is not automatically the better word. But when a published pricing structure does not match your volume, the trade worth mapping is concrete: what exactly you pay for, what the cheaper tool must still prove, and where the honest boundaries sit.
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Documents, one case at a time
Sign an NDA online: what makes the executed agreement defensible
The NDA is usually the first document of a deal and the one most often stuck in an email thread unsigned. It can be signed online — in the EU, the US and the UK the law treats an electronic signature exactly like any other. What separates a defensible executed NDA from a defended-one-anyway one is what the file itself can prove.
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