Name: ________________________________ Pd.: ____ Date: ________________

Chapter 16 Document and Handwriting Analysis Checkpoint Answers

1. The types of crimes that document examiners may be involved in can include fraudulent check and credit card operations, forgery, disputed confessions, altered medical records, wills, sales transactions, ransom notes, applications, petitions, and various other legal documents.

2. American children are all taught the same method of letter formation and develop natural variations only as they mature.

3. Motor and nerve responses become subconscious.

4. No, individual variations are unique, and there are too many variations.

5. Slope, speed, fluidity, angularity, pen pressure, and size and shape of letters and words (any of the points on pages 479 – 480).

6. No; a single characteristic is not enough for a basis of comparison.

7. There would be problems if the examiner didn’t have enough questioned samples to examine or if the writer had switched from printing to cursive or from right- to left-handed or vice versa.

8. Use of a stereomicroscope may show that the signature does not “flow.” The line quality may be shaky, or there may be pen lifts or uneven pressure.

9. A watermark is a mark incorporated into paper as it is manufactured. It has fewer fibers in a patterned area that is visible when held up to a light source.

10. Any of the 12 characteristics are acceptable. Line quality, Spacing of words and Letters, Ratio of relative height, width, and size of letters, Pen lifts and separations, Connecting strokes, Beginning and Ending Strokes, Unusual letter formation, Shading or pen pressure, Slant, Baseline habits, Flourishes or embellishments, Placement of DIACRITICS.

11. Chromatography is a method used to physically separate materials based on solubility and/or molecular size. The filter paper is the stationary phase, and the solvent is the mobile phase. When the paper is placed in the solvent, the water is “wicked up” the paper along with components of the ink. Components will be deposited along the way, producing a color pattern on the paper that can then be quantified using Rf values.

12. Oblique lighting, iodine fuming, ESDA

13. Letter spacing; ratio of height, width, and size; connecting strokes; slant; unusual letter form; baseline habits.

14. C or D; D is the better choice, to alert the company that it is a subject of spoof mail.

15. They are all malware. A virus does not self-replicate; a worm does. A Trojan horse does not; it can be a legitimate program but with a hidden function.

16. (from other sources)

a. Phishing with a telephone, using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

b. A program that records every character typed by a computer user on a keyboard.

c. Looking through trash for access codes or other sensitive information.

d. A hacker who breaks into computer systems with the intent of causing damage or stealing data.

e. A hacker of telephone systems

f. A person who combines phreaking with computer hacking.

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