[mjkornbl]

We are relying on legal opinions that the site fully complies with the ESIGN Act. That act makes electronic signatures on par with physical signatures. (Disclosure = I'm not a lawyer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Globa...

[mehrdadn]

Just a layman here but that seems like a misinterpretation of the statute? The idea of the statute seems to be that the government will not void, nullify, or refuse to enforce the terms of an electronic contract. It does not state that in any given contract, private parties must accept the terms signed in any form whatsoever -- that's still left as something for those people to agree on, and Chase very clearly spelled out that that's not valid for the contract. So the "reason" for the invalidity of a contract wouldn't be that it has an electronic signature, but that one of the parties simply didn't follow the terms it set for validity (whatever they were -- in this case, that they be personally signed, and mailed by the actual account holder). So I'm very curious how legal opinions interpret the statute otherwise, since I don't see any hint that it was intended to be interpreted as allowing one of the parties to change the signing terms to include electronic signatures.

[DannyBee]

Non-layman here, no it's not an misinterpretation of the statute.

It makes electronic signatures as good as regular ones in interstate commerce. Period. Full stop. Caselaw supports this in spades.

The only meaningful case otherwise is where statutes explicitly require in-writing signatures (a good example is copyright transfers).

There is an intra-state version of this is UETA.

[paulgb]

I spent an afternoon looking into this a few weeks ago (I ran a mass opt-out campaign for Equifax a few years ago[1] and wanted to do it again for Chase) and I came to the exact same conclusion you did. I want to appreciate what’s going on here but at the same time it seems irresponsible to give people the impression that they have opted out when they haven’t.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15207151

[JumpCrisscross]

> the idea of the statute seems to be that the government will not void, nullify, or refuse to enforce the terms of an electronic contract

Unless Chase explicitly said wet signature, then a government court would find the electronic signature valid.

[eganist]

Edit: dumb question from me. I didn't follow the flow because I don't have a chase account, so I wasn't aware it was a multi-part form.

Original comment below:

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I'm likewise not an attorney, but how hard would it be to do a simple "Type your name here to represent your signature" type of deal? This is the most common lay practice I've seen, with the more common CYA practice for electronic records being e.g. what Docusign or Adobe offer, or the use of cryptographic signatures.

[mjkornbl]

If you fill in your info on the page and click the buttom, this happens as the final part of the flow before it submits.