On several occasions I've found myself e-signing documents* (one such instance was consenting to a background check for a rental agreement). The companies that offer these services use questions to identify you, which ostensibly only you should be able to answer. In my experience, I've gotten two types of questions:
- Questions about places I've lived, e.g. "in which of these cities is 6th ave?", or "in which of these cities have you lived?"
- Questions about people I've known, e.g. "which of these people have you been acquainted with?"
The first question is usually unproblematic. The second one however, is why I'm here.
This question comes up almost every time I have to "sign" such a document and I'm not sure how they come up with the names, but when I'm lucky, they've misspelled the name of a person I know. Other times though, I've seen them butcher names of people so badly that I can only assume, of the four people listed, this one is the one "I should know"**.
When it gets that extreme though, I catch myself thinking, "technically I don't know any of the people in this list", and as such I'd be lying about knowing a person that (in the worst case) might actually exist. I'm caught in the dilemma of needing to get my document signed by "reading behind their algorithm" to intuit what they actually mean to ask and not getting my document signed because I really don't know anyone in the list***.
So can someone tell me, what would/could the legal ramifications of this lie of convenience be?
* I almost always have the option of signing some other way, e-signing is just more convenient in those situations.
** I've done this often enough that I know that this is the deciding question, whether they'll be able to "verify" my identity
*** I've always chosen not to lie :)