Fax: Technology That Refuses to Die Under Attack

securitas writes "The BBC Magazine's Paul Rubens reports on the ever-growing popularity of the fax machine, despite the widespread availability of e-mail and digital document/photo scanners. Why is fax still so popular? Partly because it is a mature technology that has legal weight and because of the emergence of Internet and Web e-mail-to-fax and fax-to-e-mail gateways, not to mention the relative lack of spam faxes. But that is changing. The New York Times Technology's Lisa Napoli reports that Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch is waging a battle against purveyors of illegal junk faxes (IHT) like Fax.com, which Kirsch has sued for $2.2 trillion, detailed at junkfax.org. Also joining the fight are lawyer and Telephone Consumer Protection Act co-author Gerard Waldron - he won $2.25 million from Fax.com. Finally consumer advocate Robert Braver's junkfaxes.org has 36 lawsuits pending against the junk fax industry. More evidence that spammers are among the lowest forms of life on Earth."

Simple....

[Anonymous Coward]

...when is the last time you received a FAX offer to enlarge your penis?

There is certainly a lot of FAX spam, but it's still quite useful today. Not everyone has a scanner handy, and it's often easier to sketch something up or jot a note on paper than it is to scan/crop/edit/add stuff electronically. If you happen to be discussing something static that you have a picture or a PDF of, fine, that's easy to email - but dynamic data has really yet to become widespread and easy to use. I know that there are some new PDF features for markup and such, but they're still not nearly as quick and easy to use as a pen.

Maybe..

[niko9]

it's because fax machiens are soo easy to use. They don't have operating systems, or keyboards or mice. For the most part they are idiot proof, cheap, and portable.

But most importantly, hey do one thing and do it well.

Legal Documents

[tobechar]

Many companies reply on Fax to get signatures, or approval for a project and etc.

Faxed documents are used as practical legal documents in Canada, AFAIK. Companies rely on Fax to get their work done, which should keep Fax around for a long long time.

One question though, isn't it about time to move up from 14,400 baud Fax transmission?!

junk faxes not new

[Down8]

Junk faxing is not at all new, nor is it uncommon. I know my office was getting 1-2/day (multiple pages), back in 1998ish (and surely before I had started working there).

There are very specific laws against this, b/c unlike e-mail, it's easily proved that the junk mailer wasted your resources (paper/toner/phone line).

My idea of a good anti-spam bill would just extend the current anti-junk-fax laws to include any form of electronic communication, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

-bZj

Because it is a direct connection

[Enzo1977]

Why are fax machines popular? Because they are secure. Sure there are more secure methods of delivering information like registered mail. But the potential for someone between company A and company B to intercept information from an E-mail is greater. Likewise the expense of qualified people to setup your secure firewalls and what have you is a greater cost than having to spend on an ISDN line and a half way decent fax machine. Is it possible when sending a fax someone at the other end of the line could swipe the documents from the machine and take all the secrets that might be sent? Sure it is possible, but the chances of that are the same as the chances of someone finding an unlocked terminal. For that reason fax machines are much more secure because the average person can trust that there is a direct connection, and that no one at any point during transmittal is going to intercept any information. This also involves a level of trust with your telco, and that someone hasn't tapped your lines. This leads us to question whether the current standards for E-mail are suitable to replace the good old standby fax machine.

point and click

[fermion]

The fax machine is the perfect assistant. It is almost 100% reliable with almost not setup, maintainance, or fuss. Put paper in, press a fewe buttons, and go. The last time I used a fax machine it offered two line capabilities, ability to store many pages, as well as computer printer functions.

Scanning in a document, attaching it to email, and then sending it requires more time, expertise, as well as less reliability. The time issue is the most important.

I use a fax program but only becuase I hardly ever need to send faxes and I don't want to allocate space for a fax machine. The complexity of me sending a fax from my computer, even if it is a document I create on the computer, is significantly more complex than using a fax machine. I also have used email-to-fax services, but these were only benificial for out-of-area faxes, in which I saved toll charges.

I see it similiar to Advantix camera. The advantix is probably of lower quality than even a simple 35 mm point and shoot. However, for most people is very much simpler, and therefore the quality issue is compensated for.

Still a usefull technology

[toasted_calamari]

Slashdot is a technology oriented website, i can say with some certainty that everyone here has a fairly comprehensive knowledge of computers. However, this is not true of the rest of the world. For people who know little about computers aside from basic email checking and word processing, sending handwritten documents and other such things electronically is only feasible by fax. I have helped several people who send documents of this nature on a regular basis set up scanners they had purchased. They were absolutely mystified at how to set up the scanner and email documents that were scanned with it. Fax machines are far far easier to use than email and a scanner, and the recipient gets a paper copy of the document, something which is mentally comforting for many.

Why Fax Machines Are Popular

[Jerk City Troll]

They just work.

When is the last time you just typed up an email address on the computer, slapped your document on the scanner, pushed a button, and everything worked flawlessly without any intervention.

Fax machines are incredibly easy to use and just seem to work, end of story. They have a user interface that just about everyone is already familiar with (the telephone) where as computers and scanners are just plain over complicated in really stupid ways. There's issues with drivers, non-standard UIs for scanning, and I have yet to see "one button" features work on any scanner on any platform.

It's a shame not more devices work as easily as fax machines and telephones.

Why I use fax

[jonbryce]

I find that you get a much faster response to a fax than to any other form of communication.

It is much harder to ignore a fax sitting on your desk than it is to pretend that the email got lost in the spam filter, or the letter got lost in the post, or to sit for hours waiting for them to answer the voice telephone.

Fax spam can be a problem in the UK. Fortunately, my home fax machine isn't on any of the spammers lists, but at work we get about 15 spams per day, even although they are illegal.

If work was a Ltd company rather than a partnership then it would be legal to send them unless you put your number on the "do not fax" list (Fax Preference Service). A lot of spammers will stop if you put it on that list, but there are others who use the FPS as a list of confirmed working fax machines, and spam their own "Do not fax" services to that list. They generally want about GBP5.00 for you to be placed on the list.

If you try complaining about it, nobody wants to know.

Re:How do they get your fax number?

[silentbozo]

Wardialing. It's illegal to do it, but just like spam and spam laws (and telemarketers using autodialing machines with recorded messages), it doesn't deter them in the slightest. Even worse, once they figure out your number has a fax machine attached to it, they then sell that number to all sorts of junk faxers. Soon you'll be getting all the toner, OTC stock tip, mortgage refinance, and free vacations in Florida junk faxes...

Re:Simple....

[K8Fan]

Sure, they can be useful, but my pet peeve is people using faxes as a way to avoid learning to use e-mail. I can't recall how many times I've seen someone:

• Create a document in a word processing program.
• Print it out.
• Feed that into a fax machine.
• Fax it to someone who...
• Re-types the document into a word processing program (because the fax looks like shit.)

It happens every single day in Corporate America.

Re:Technology for technology's sake

[Kris_J]

??

You never really know if the fax got through.

You never really know if email gets through either until you receive a reply from a human responding to the content.

Re:Technology for technology's sake

[SurgeonGeneral]

Probably the same argument for IP telephony vs telephones may be applied. When IP or Internet voice calls become standard and analogue lines become antiquainted we'll see the emergence of some applicance (document scanner with an Ethernet interface).

The thing about analogue lines is their authenticity. It is very difficult to hijack someone's phone number and pretend you are that person. We all know how easy it is to spoof an IP.

Faxes are considered legal documents in many cases, and they are used to transmit official documents, signitures and alike. This is based solely on the fact that they are transmitted over analogue lines an thus offer significant proof of authenticity.

Then again, IP telephony would see the end of a lot of telemarketing because you could never trust anyone to be who they say they are and the chances of someone intercepting the call and garnering your private data would be far, far, FAR higher.

Fax produces hard copies

[mnmn]

Everything else is on magnetic or optical media that doesnt have much life anyway. The fax produces hard copies which are fast becoming a commodity.

Because it works

[dacarr]

Yes, I know, we were supposed to all be working in a paperless office ten years ago. So why not? Because electronica can be diddled with and altered. You can do it to paper, but it's a lot harder and can be proven otherwise.