Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#51

Post by BenjiWiebe »

digitaltrees wrote: post #25
mysterydip wrote: post #5

I’m all for fun side projects, so don’t take this the wrong way. Does this have a practical use case? Like are people actually wanting to make their PDFs less legible? Usually I’m trying to do the opposite, clean up my scanned-in documents.

Yes. Fraud. It makes a document look like it existed in physical form. Imagine for example a purchase agreement for a house that was physically scanned. You could change the signature to a different name and then make it look like it was original. I am not asserting the authors intent is to facilitate fraud or there isn’t any other practical use, but let’s not be naive and act like fraud isn’t a likely use. Before yo…

Print - sign - scan. I've never been told to keep the physical print out.

I've also never had someone refuse my too-perfect digitally inserted signature, but I could totally see it happening.

Oh and I don't like signing stuff anywhere, so I also used my scanned signature and got a custom stamp made. :)

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#52

Post by hananova »

digitaltrees wrote: post #37
bluebarbet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.

This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality. Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements. And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it…

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#54

Post by monkpit »

pooploop64 wrote: post #8
mysterydip wrote: post #5

I’m all for fun side projects, so don’t take this the wrong way. Does this have a practical use case? Like are people actually wanting to make their PDFs less legible? Usually I’m trying to do the opposite, clean up my scanned-in documents.

I've been in situations where I had to supply a digital version of a signed document but the person asking for it required that it be physically printed off to be signed and then scanned back in. Some policy thing. I think it would technically be fraud to use this but that's one use I thought of. The description however seems like the creator just likes how scanned documents look. They describe it like how analogue m…

How is it fraud? Who is being defrauded? What is the impact to the victim?

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#56

Post by marshray »

digitaltrees wrote: post #47
bluebarbet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting take that reveals differing moral bases. As a preamble, I have zero moral qualms about technically committing fraud in order to access my own money (almost nobody would). More important, I choose not to respect a law that upholds an insecure and broken system. A parallel with traffic regulations come to mind: as a cyclist I regularly break rules when I consider that they do not best serve my safety. Al…

Hard disagree. Just because you don’t understand the rationale of a law doesn’t mean it is arbitrary and disconnected from your safety or best interest. I’ll give a concrete example. In law school I was hired to write a memo on a traffic circle. There was a very deliberate and effective approach to identifying where pedestrian crossings were the safest. And the cross walk itself is an attempt to encourage people to g…

You went to law school and you don't see any the difference between forging someone else's signature on a document and encoding one's own authentic signature into a digital document file in the manner needed by the recipient?

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#57

Post by bluebarbet »

digitaltrees wrote: post #42
bluebarbet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting take that reveals differing moral bases. As a preamble, I have zero moral qualms about technically committing fraud in order to access my own money (almost nobody would). More important, I choose not to respect a law that upholds an insecure and broken system. A parallel with traffic regulations come to mind: as a cyclist I regularly break rules when I consider that they do not best serve my safety. Al…

I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud. I said that process would be used in other fraudulent acts.

>I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud.

Yes you did. Verbatim.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#58

Post by bluebarbet »

falsemyrmidon wrote: post #40
digitaltrees wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality. Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements. And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it…

You could just as easily edit it, print it, then scan it again. This tech doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do. The real problem is that written signatures are a poor form of authentication.

In the 2020s, outside the office (and certainly outside middle-class America), ordinary people hardly even use computers let alone printers. I have not owned a printer in 15 years. So, yes, it is a massive inconvenience. Not to mention insecure: to make a paper document I would need to share the supposedly private file with third parties.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#59

Post by Symbiote »

sowbug wrote: post #35
mysterydip wrote: post #5

I’m all for fun side projects, so don’t take this the wrong way. Does this have a practical use case? Like are people actually wanting to make their PDFs less legible? Usually I’m trying to do the opposite, clean up my scanned-in documents.

Charles Schwab, the brokerage, didn't like that my signed form retitling an account looked too perfect (I had scanned my signature and then inserted the JPEG into their PDF form, which is absolutely 100% legal as a signature). So I printed the form out and sent them a picture of the printout. They didn't like that, either. So I moved my money out of the account. That worked fine.

What were they expecting? A letter sent by mail?

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#60

Post by embedding-shape »

Symbiote wrote: post #59
sowbug wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Schwab, the brokerage, didn't like that my signed form retitling an account looked too perfect (I had scanned my signature and then inserted the JPEG into their PDF form, which is absolutely 100% legal as a signature). So I printed the form out and sent them a picture of the printout. They didn't like that, either. So I moved my money out of the account. That worked fine.

What were they expecting? A letter sent by mail?

Bunch of places want it to "look like" you've printed the page, then signed it, then scanned it. If it doesn't "look like" that, they won't accept it. Makes no sense, but I've also encountered it a bunch of times myself too.
Post reply on HN