What Can You Do to Stop Junk Faxes?

olddoc asks: "I am having a growing problem with junk faxes. Unlike email, it costs me money when I get a fax so junk faxes really tick me off. A while ago, I gave my number to a removal number and now I am getting more junk faxes than ever." What options are there for dealing with this? If you've also had this problem, what did you do and how effective was it in stopping unwanted faxes?

PC FAX for receiving.

[ViXX0r]

At our office we turned off auto-answer on the fax machine proper and set up FAX receiving on a PC plugged into the FAX line to receive them. Now all the incoming faxes are just saved in the computer. The ones we want we print out, the spam you can just delete.

If in the UK...

[KingDaveRa]

http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/fps/ [mpsonline.org.uk] - the Fax Preference Service works wonders in stopping junk faxes. Same goes for the Phone Preference Service, and the Mail Preference Service.

Not a lot of help if you're in the rest of the world, but still - this could be useful to somebody!

Re:Removal doesn't help

[goodie3shoes]

Here's the US FCC's info on junk faxes http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/unwantedfaxes .html [fcc.gov] Interesting that the business advertised is liable even if they didn't send the fax. But this doesn't really help. Since the senders are scumbags, one can't be surprised that they don't follow the rules. Why couldn't software scan received faxes for telltale signs of junk such as "Cancun", "vacation", "To all Employees", and trash them as we do with email filters?

SPAM becomes CAPTCHA

[tepples]

Why couldn't software scan received faxes for telltale signs of junk such as "Cancun", "vacation", "To all Employees", and trash them as we do with email filters?

Because faxes have to be OCR'd. Spammers would just use techniques similar to those used in visual CAPTCHAs to distort keywords, similar to the "CA|\|CUN" obfuscation performed by e-mail spam tools. Pump and dump spammers are already doing this with their stock pitches that they attach as an image.

Re:How Much do you need faxes?

[Dadoo]

I'd say that faxes are a disappearing technology.

As much as I'd like to agree with you (because I think there are many better solutions), I can't. I work for a company that processes insurance claims and many of our claims are submitted via fax. Until about 6 months ago, they had 8 or 9 fax machines receiving the faxes, but they could barely keep up. Then, I replaced them with a couple of servers - 16 lines each - running Hylafax. On average, we're receiving 800 to 900 faxes a day, but during January and February, we were averaging around 1400.

Re:Get with the times

[Kamokazi]

Or look at the google ad under the post (I'm seeing eFax there).

We use that where I work and it's quite nice. It e-mails you when you recieve a fax and there is an application that you use to send them...you can send word documents, PDFs, or it interfaces directly with a scanner.

Unfortunately I don't know how much the service costs, it was in place before I begain working there.

We do persuade our customers and vendors to use e-mail as much as possible (sheet-feed scanners are not very expensive)...we used to have 20 numbers through eFax and have managed to remove five of them in a few months. If we had to, we could probably axe 5 more of them.

A couple comments

[slackmaster2000]

Junk faxes here really slowed down after coverage of the enforcement of junk fax legislation started to hit the mainstream media. I guess that was in the late 90s sometime. We still get a few from time to time. Although now that I think of it, this decrease also probably coincided with an increase in spam, which probably has more to do with it (cheaper, easier, wider base of victims).

Here's a wikipedia page with information about what can be done legally against junk fax senders in the US, if it's bad enough that you want to take the time to go after them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_fax [wikipedia.org]

The solution, although not so much a solution as a better system, is to use fax server software or an online fax service. I run a local fax server here. Faxes come in and are routed via email to the secretary who was at one time responsible for pulling paper faxes off the old fax machine. This person then routes the fax to the appropriate person, and acts as a junk fax filter :) There are four major benefits to software faxing: 1) You'll save money because there are no consumables to buy, and because of this the cost of receiving a junk fax is the same as receiving a junk email as long as you don't pay per minute on your phone line. 2) Routing faxes through email is much more effective than tossing paper into a physical inbox, especially if you have to make copies of faxes for multiple people. 3) Many fax servers will enable your employees to send a fax by simply printing to a special fax printer on their computer, saving time, money, etc. 4) The quality of received faxes, and especially outgoing faxes, is considerably improved.

I do sympathize with you. Especially if you're working with a lot of international companies (assuming you're in the US, if not sorry), sometimes you simply have to be able to accept faxed documents to keep customers happy. You might encourage them to start using email, perhaps by pointing out the financial benefits. Also, a lot of people might not know about simple tools like pdfcreator with which they can print and send a purchase order via email right from their existing accounting software.

I do object to your comment implying that junk email doesn't cost anything. Perhaps if you're working for a small outfit with hosted email it doesn't appear to cost anything. My mail server here processes a hundred thousand spam messages per month, and we're a pretty small outfit. This definitely costs real money in terms of hardware and software support, and most importantly employee time (I guarantee that people spend more time going through their junk email or flagging email as junk than they do looking at junk faxes).

Can't Get Rid of it.

[binaryspiral]

Faxes are official legal copies of documents. Email attachments are not.

Anyone who has to send a signed or legal documents quickly - a fax is the only option unless you send it via courier.

TCPA

[deblau]

Read this [fcc.gov]. In particular:

The FCC can issue warning citations and impose fines against companies violating or suspected of violating the junk fax rules, but does not award individual damages. If you have received a fax advertisement from someone who does not have an established business relationship with you or to whom you have not provided prior express permission to send fax advertisements, you can file a complaint with the FCC. You can file your complaint by completing the FCC's on-line complaint Form 1088 at: www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html; e-mailing [e-mail]; calling 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) voice or 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322) TTY; faxing 1-866-418-0232; or writing to:

Federal Communications Commission
Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
Consumer Inquiries and Complaints Division
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554.

email now legal for some things in UK

[pbhj]

There was a change in the law here in the UK in the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 meaning that emails and electronic carriers with docs on could be accepted in certain circumstances by courts and tribunals (etc.). I think however that they can still specify fax as being the only allowed electronic mode of communicating a document.

Which means that there are circumstances in which you are wrong.

Indeed certain places like UKIPO request email in preference for eg post-grant amendments.

FWIW.

Here are some good places to start...

[NewbieV]

Courtesy of Google:

• Junkfax [junkfax.org]
• Junkbusters [junkbusters.com]
• If you're in the US, the Federal Communications Commission [fcc.gov]

Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991

[Scutter]

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 was not designed to prevent spam (although it's being used that way now). It was designed to stop junk faxes and it really works! Use it! Here's some good info. [junkbusters.com]

Legality..how did this get modded a 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Faxes are official legal copies of documents. Email attachments are not.

Anyone who has to send a signed or legal documents quickly - a fax is the only option unless you send it via courier.

You can't make a blanket statement like that about the law. In the U.S. alone, we have a minimum of 51 separate jurisdictions applying 51 different laws. If one is outside the U.S. then the jurisdiction again make a difference.

So far as I know, in Ohio and in the 6th Federal Circuit, faxes are no better or worse than any other copy of a document, including an email attachment of it. If one is filing a document, then it can only be done electronically in the Federal Disctrict Courts in this Circuit. They will not accept faxes.

You can sue them.

[seebs]

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice; rather, it is an account of my layman's perception of how things have worked.

It's very simple.

Unless they have prior express permission (or, thanks to a new enabling law, an "established business relationship" with many additional qualifiers), unsolicited faxes are categorically prohibited in the US. Penalty? $500, per advertisement, statutory damages, plus possible penalties.

So sue.

Call them up, find out who it is and what they're selling. Tape the call if that's legal in your area. Then sue.

My share, after attorney's fees and costs (including copying, etc.), of my junk fax litigation has been about $38,000 over the last few years. Mostly mortgage brokers, many of whom are predatory lenders as well. Do not waste your time trying to identify "Mortgage Services" -- just get them to hand you to a local mortgage company, and sue the mortgage company. Generally, in my experience, a given 800 number is affiliated with a single customer, so you call the number, and then sue for all the faxes you've gotten with that number on them.

I write about this stuff some in my blog. Largest total settlement was with Allied Telesyn, who paid $250 per ad to all the people who filled out claim forms, $5k to me, and probably more like $300k to some lawyers. Largest settlements for me personally have been on the order of $10k, but my friendly neighborhood lawyer gets about 35%, and there's filing fees and such.

Just a few things to know:
1. Junk faxers are dishonest. They will lie. They will tell you they didn't know it was illegal, they will lie to you about the law, they will say they didn't send the faxes, and so on. We see this all the time.
2. If you are not comfortable representing yourself pro se, get a lawyer.
3. Don't go to small claims unless you are absolutely SURE that your state won't let you do district court. Small claims judges are often unfamiliar with statutory damage laws.

There are no damages to prove; the law sets the damages at $500, per advertisement.

If you want to call remove numbers, go ahead, and write down which ones you called and when, but don't expect it to have any effect.

Disconnect Tone

[wonkavader]

It's a commercial product and a helluva lot less satisfying than what you want. You WANT to take these guys out back and shoot them once in the head, but all you can really do is get them to stop calling.

Get a telezapper or similar product. http://www.telezapper.com/ [telezapper.com]

It sends a "This number is disconnected" tone. Humans ignore it. Automated fax and telemarketer systems note it and remove your number from their database. Why call something which is known to be gone?

It's cheap, and it works fairly well.

Less mess in your local alley, too, though I'd still prefer the stronger solution.