6 Reasons to Trash Your Fax Machine - Comments Page 2

We use a fax machine BECAUSE of security of information. The fax machine is part of our computer's printer/scanner. It sits next to my the desk of the person who needs to receive it in an office used ONLY by that person. This individual control of the reception or sending of faxes is shared at all three of the locations sending and receiving our faxes. If we sent e-faxes or attachments to emails, they would NOT be secure. Notice how Korea was able to get copies of emails from Sony records??? Note the previous comment. Would you like your full credit card information bouncing around on a ton of email servers over which you have NO CONTROL?? I wouldn't.

Keep your hands off my fax machine. I have a stand-alone fax machine & I'm keeping it. I've used the fax function in my 4-in-1 printers and it just doesn't work that well. If you use a fax machine only occasionally (once a day or so for me) you don't need a dedicated fax line as you can just send it over the same line as your phone (landline). And I can send all my long distance faxes free as I have unlimited long distance phone service. And I do know how to scan and attach to e-mail, which I do frequently, but there are some times when only a fax machine will do. And the recipient has to print out those attachments; why not just fax the doc in the first place? As others have pointed out, doctors and government agencies like to use faxes. Fax machines aren't expensive; I have a Brother laserfax for which I paid about $150--written off as a business expense. Works for me, Bob

Regular faxing is no problem, for me. I have a Brother MFC Printer, which has a stand alone Fax, built in.
You just never know, when you will need to send a Fax.

When Hubby and I signed our lease, this was done by a service or computer program, called DocuSign. It was done by "email", but, it is a legal binding contract. So, I have done both, with my computer and MFC printer.

Since, I have done both methods, I honestly, can not say, one is better than the other. I personally think, both have their places in our business and personal lives.

Bob, would you please comment on the security issues raised by e-faxes. I work for a financial adviser and we are very concerned about transmitting sensitive and confidential client information to our brokers using internet fax services. Most of the e-fax service companies we have looked at do not guarantee encrypted data transmission between end points. An "old school" analog fax between between my machine and my brokers fax machine, is encrypted and secure. Correct?

Our vendors and customers, do not want to go through the extra steps that are required to use encrypted email attachments. These require passwords that WE must create and communicating the passwords to the recipients is a problem unto itself.

Show me how to send an encrypted email conversation between two parties using two Google emails accounts (that can't be intercepted and does not require a password or some 3rd party account that requires a login/password), and we'll start a new company together.

Security & hacking (for example Sony) and the NIS spying has even forced many intelligence agencies (Germany & Russia) to go back to snail mail and faxes in lieu of cell phones and email.

In Japan Fax is still in use. Rather changing from Fax to E-Fax only changes are made in Fax machines such as paper and ink.

It is a part of the business community.

I am rather negative toward faxes. PDF documents are much simpler to handle. Over the last 10 years, I don't remember a single office that did not have a scanner. As for encryption, that's just an excuse for not doing anything. There are multiple encryption programs that would work just fine. Pick one and be done with it.

In a busy Pharmacy, the faxed orders from docs are legally the only 'electronic'ones that are securely verifiable. Experiments in esignatures have not found their way to approval legislatively, or acceptably to governments and payers who want be able to audit paper.

To Bert and the others concerning about violating HIPPA and other confidential information. My land-line fax number was a prefix difference to the fax numbers of both our local cancel center and school district's disciplinary office. Many of days my floor was covered by that pricey roll of paper.

I definitely did not need a fifty page health record of a dying person and my day would have been much better not knowing certain things about some children. Oh, and many times did you answer your home phone only to hear that grating fax chatter.

YES! let's get rid of those dinosaurs.

The Pope prefers to fax back and forth for privacy and security reasons. With some of the church scandals you can understand why. Maybe we should hold off on the fax funeral or is it time for the last sacrament?

I've actually gone paperless for just over a year. Ok, I still use toilet paper, but that is the exception. I just sold one of my houses and except for one document, which had to be notarized for which I not only had to sign, but I had to be present, everything else was via DocuSign. Email is also legally binding, not just faxes. If auditors want paper, that's generally their problem. i.e. if they want it, they print it. Please see: http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2013/12/09/are-your-emails-enforceable-contracts/

Re: Faxes...

In general, paper still has the highest probative value: e.g., a registered or certified letter with a return receipt, physically tracked and signed for, every step of the way. Anything digital can be, and has been, faked or manipulated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: And anything physical can be lost, stolen, folded, bent, spindled or mutilated. See http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/21/17402238-mail-on-fire-after-postal-service-18-wheeler-crashes-along-florida-interstate

Re: EDITOR'S NOTE: And anything physical can be lost, stolen, folded, bent, spindled or mutilated. See http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/21/17402238-mail-on-fire-after-postal-service-18-wheeler-crashes-along-florida-interstate

Good point, especially when the law requires the original physical document. I often use both physical and digital documents, one to satisfy the law, and the other for backup.

We still use fax. Dedicated fax line and all. If a customer wants to do business by fax, I'm not going to turn down his money. It's not just faxes, it the entire throwaway march-of-progress culture. Being willing to accommodate technophobes, fossils, and ludites is a huge business advantage - and not just customers - vendors, and even employees, too. Some of the most knowledgable, highly intelligent people in many fields (the people with 20, 30 or more years of experience) are not computer literate. Many of them don't want to be, either.

I'm all for progress. Here's the thing - if you limit yourself, you are limiting yourself. It doesn't matter whether it's limiting yourself by not adopting the new stuff, or limiting yourself by not learning how to handle the older stuff that has been superseded, but is still lingering. You are still limiting yourself.

So by all means - every one dump your faxes. Cut yourselves off from whole chunks of the market - those of us who are able to maintain backward compatibility will be happy to take those market shares with less competition.

I was just scanning through the notes posted about fax machines. BobD mentioned Mighty Fax that could be used with Windows 7 computers. I just put in their webpage and found their domain name is up for sale.

thehttp://www.hugedomains.com/domain_profile.cfm?d=mightyfax&e=com