In March, I wrote a blog post that talked about how notaries identify signers. You can find that here on my blog. Another important tool and requirement for a notary is "personal appearance". Personal appearance for a notary implies that the person who is to have their signature notarized is in the physical presence of the notary. There is a current trend toward allowing notarizations to be done via the web, using technology to bring the notary and the signer together.
Currently, there a six states considering allowing web notarizations and three states that do allow it in one form or another. There is a good article that recently appeared in the Notary Bulletin , from the National Notary Association, which discusses recent bills being considered in regards to web notarization. Web notarization is where the signer of the document connects with the notary over the web by video and audio. Verification of the signer is done by asking certain "knowledge questions" that only the signer would know. That's the authentication that the signer is who he or she purports to be.
I am skeptical about this form of "verification". With a lot of personal information and data available online via social media, chatting, and other electronic means, I feel that it's a real possibility that someone could fake being you with this type of verification. With in-person personal appearance being required in California, I can at least speak with the person and physically handle their ID, checking to see if it might be fake. No, it's not always easy to tell if an ID is fake. Criminals are getting very sophisticated these days but at least with a person in front of you, you have a chance to not make a mistake because of poor electronic connection or poor audio.
I understand that web notarizations might make our job as notaries easier, since we won't necessarily have to travel or meet with someone and can do the notarization right from our desktops. I believe that since our jobs as a notary is vital to keep fraud from happening, we need to be extra vigilant is making sure we are notarizing the correct document for the RIGHT person. Yes, let's harness technology to make our work lives easier and maybe even more convenient for customers and ourselves but we should not neglect or lessen our ability to provide authentication of signers just to make things "easier".