The ESIGN Act is the US federal law, passed in 2000, that gives electronic signatures the same legal standing as handwritten ones, provided the signer shows intent, consents to doing business electronically, and the record is retained accurately.

UETA, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act of 1999, is the US state-level model law adopted by 49 states that makes electronic signatures and records legally enforceable wherever the parties agreed to transact electronically.

eIDAS is the EU regulation, in force since 2016, that defines three tiers of electronic signature (simple, advanced, and qualified) and guarantees that a signature can't be rejected by EU courts just for being electronic.

PIPEDA is Canada's federal privacy law governing how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information, and it also recognizes electronic signatures and documents in Part 2.

An e-signature audit trail is the recorded chain of evidence around a signature, typically the signer's identity markers, IP address, timestamps, consent, document history, and a cryptographic hash, that lets you prove later who signed what, when, and that nothing changed since.

An electronic signature is the legal act of signing electronically (a click, a typed name, a drawn signature), while a digital signature is a cryptographic technique that proves a document's integrity; the second often protects the first, but they are not synonyms.

A wet signature is a handwritten signature made with ink on paper, named for the moment the ink is literally wet, and it remains legally required only for a narrow set of documents like wills and certain notarized or family-law records.

PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) is the European standard, ETSI EN 319 142, for embedding cryptographic digital signatures inside PDF files so that any later modification of the document is detectable by any standard PDF reader.

A Qualified Electronic Signature is the highest eIDAS signature tier, created with a certified signing device and a qualified certificate from an audited EU trust provider, and it is the only tier automatically equal to a handwritten signature in every EU member state.

A tamper-evident seal on a signed document is a cryptographic mechanism, usually a hash or digital signature, that doesn't prevent changes but makes any post-signing modification mathematically detectable.

A certificate of completion is the summary document an e-signature platform produces when all parties finish signing, compiling the signer identities, timestamps, IP addresses, consent records, and document fingerprint into one evidentiary exhibit.

In e-signature platforms, an envelope is the container for one signing transaction: the document(s) being signed, the list of recipients with their roles and signing order, and the status and audit history of the whole exchange.