I agree. Hell, just the other day, I bought a $2,000 laptop at an Apple store on my credit card and I had to sign one of those touch pads. The signature pad was so slippery that I could not write properly so my signature was an unreadable scrawl. My signature is normally very readable. The Apple Store employee who handled my transaction probably never saw my signature, and even if it did pop up on his terminal, there is no way he could conclude that the name I just signed matched the signature on the back of my Discover card. At any rate, I got my MacBook Pro and I am a happy camper and as soon as the bill comes, I will pay it, so Discover's happy, Steve Jobs is happy, and I am too.
Signatures on credit cards are bogus, as are photos. They offer a false sense of security. Most store clerks are not qualified to judge the authenticity of a signature and photos that could fit on a credit card can easily be faked.
The best way to improve credit card security is to require a variable length pin for ALL transactions where the pin is not encoded anywhere on the credit card.
