7 Reasons to Trash Your Fax Machine - Comments Page 1

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All Comments on: "7 Reasons to Trash Your Fax Machine"

Comment Page: 1 |  2 

Posted by:

Lady Fitzgerald
17 Jul 2017

I so totally agree that faxing needs to be abolished for all the reasons mentioned. Another reason is many homes and businesses no longer use land lines for telephone service and most cellular services do not support faxing.

Posted by:

C. Wengerd
17 Jul 2017

Reason #8 to stop using faxes: Most homeowners do not have a fax machine but most homeowners have internet, email and a printer. Customers come first, right?

Posted by:

Ken Mitchell
17 Jul 2017

Many medical offices will accept or send faxes where they will not accept or send emails. HIPAA rules allow faxes, where they do not allow emails.

Posted by:

Jon
17 Jul 2017

Faxes fell out of favor in most of Europe well over a decade ago.
I've wondered when a right-minded American such as yourself would point out the obsolesce of faxes.

e-mail attachments work quite well.

Bob, thanks!

Posted by:

nick
17 Jul 2017

can i send or receive fax via google voice

Posted by:

Daniel
17 Jul 2017

One of the reasons you still see many professional offices (eg, Doctors, nursing homes, etc) using faxes is a combination of HIPAA privacy rules and technical issues. I have switched my personal faxes over to a web based service. But in order to find one that would sign the necessary HIPAA compliance paperwork I have to pay a premium.

Using email with encryption sounds like a perfect solution until you get into the nitty gritty of the laws and rules. I cannot afford $3,000 fine PER OCCURRENCE. Neither can Doctors. We've got 100's of thousands of Doctors that are trying desperately to concentrate on patients, and they are getting bombarded by regulators. Those Doctors don't have time to do all the research.

There are now services that are moving towards solving these issues. But interoperability is a big issue. That's a $10 word for making different systems talk to each other in a standard format. It should be much simpler than it is, but too many corporations want to corner the market on medical communication. Picture the war between beta and VHS played out between multiple more companies.

Anyway, most Doctors would agree with the end goal of getting rid of faxes because of the readability and portability you mentioned above. But getting there is proving to be more difficult than one would think.

Posted by:

Steve
17 Jul 2017

Makes you wonder how up-to-date that doctor is on medical issues. But I know what you mean. I do a lot of work with the IRS and they are totally dependent on using faxes.

Posted by:

Renaud Olgiati
17 Jul 2017

I am surprised you do not mention the possibility for users who have a phone line, of getting a USB fax-modem for around $8 to $10 on Ebay, and use one of the many free Print-To-Fax applications like Efax-gtk under Linux, or similar under Mac or MS Windows...

Posted by:

AndyB
17 Jul 2017

For some small businesses faxes still make sense because of the time that it would take to scan a document in and create a emailable document. (Now this is assuming that the document is not already on a computer)

Posted by:

AL. S
17 Jul 2017

the goverment allows faxes ad medical offices would vioate HIPPA Laws. DL Licenses can be faxed the 7 reasons are invalid. A Dedicated Line is about $7.00 A Scanner, Printer, Fax can be bought for as little as $ 89.00 Inks are cheap 2 Black and 4 Color Carts under $10.00 set. whch also fits my Printers. Try sending a Fax via cell phone.

Posted by:

Tom
17 Jul 2017

A real important reason is that thanks to AOL, Yahoo, and the incredibly dumb IT profession, many emails no longer function from secondary accounts or hardware (cell phones) due to the over-the-top love of anonymity by IT types, while average users struggle with spam filters like barracuda, which often block based on cable IP addresses, not the actual ISP of the user. Dilbert's enemy Mordoc of Information Prevention seems to truly live at many fo the big email providers.

Posted by:

Tom
17 Jul 2017

To clarify: reliance on DKIM and DMARC make is much easier and faster to send something by fax - except to state agencies whose machines do not work correctly.

Posted by:

Sarah L
17 Jul 2017

I think you should tal with lawyers and doctors before being so blasé about this. Plus fax machines need not use special paper. I last was in an office in the last century and the fax used regular paper, recorded the documents in and out on digital files, and were easy to use. Paper is a useful material, long lasting.

Posted by:

Dave H.
17 Jul 2017

This is not a criticism of your "annoyed reader," but perhaps he or she should consider getting a new doctor, banker, accountant, and lawyer who are more up to date. (Do these service providers keep current on medical advances, tax changes, and recent court decisions??)

Posted by:

Bill
17 Jul 2017

After I retired from the local phone company I contracted as a communications technician at a local university for a few years. When hooking up a fax machine (and they still have them everywhere on campus) I'd ask why they were still using them. Usual answers were that faxes were more secure, they didn't trust the internet, they didn't know how to PDF their documents, they needed hard copies not email copies, etc. There were lots more excuses but I can't recall them all just now. The health sciences department seemed to be most resistant to change.

Posted by:

Merrill Guice
17 Jul 2017

The three places that still use faxes are: government, education, and medical. Not by coincidence these are the three segments of the economy that never picked up on the information revolution. In other words, they are ready for complete disruption. I have seen attempts at moving to encrypted email at the local and state level. It is pathetic. Most of the workforce is old and not computer literate costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars in training, installation, and after training support. A good opportunity for computer consultants if you don't mind being played really late.

Posted by:

Mainer
17 Jul 2017

And then there are those of us who fax an average of a few pages a day, have the fax machine hooked to our main landline so it's essentially a free service and receives no spam. Fax machine is available for use to send paperwork to doctor's offices (they don't send any to me). Where's the problem? I have an all-in-one printer but don't find the fax function very easy to use. And my doctors are up-to-date on medical issues; if they weren't they wouldn't be my doctor.

Posted by:

D. Lynch
17 Jul 2017

Notary Signing Agents receive and send Faxes and they are considered more secure than email Faxes.

Banks required faxes when you need to send them mortgage information. I recently encountered this.

Posted by:

Dean Forsyth
17 Jul 2017

I was asked to provide a tax transcript to the underwriter for my home loan. I needed it quickly, yet the IRS would only mail it snail mail (2-3 weeks) or fax it to a "real fax machine". They refused to send it to my internet fax number because it was not secure. Somehow they were okay with sending it to a Kinkos I found and provided the number for. Customers rarely come first when government is involved.

Posted by:

Ex-life insurance controller
17 Jul 2017

My Fortune 50 life insurance company employer required us to use the special encrypted email "send" key if we were transmitting SSN's or check account numbers of our clients. Forgetting to encrypt cost us a small fine (more like a cuss jar).
Faxes were considered safe and secure. Upper management would not listen to my protests that the phone lines were just as susceptible.

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