What Can You Do to Stop Junk Faxes? 156
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?
Removal doesn't help (Score:3, Interesting)
I've also thought about creating an autodialer script to call the fax removal line and submit every number in the phonebook to it. A simple script could send Hayes commands to a modem to dial the removal line, wait X seconds (or punch "1" to remove or whatever), and then send another dial command to submit bogus removal numbers. Poisoning their DB of faxable numbers would make the return per dialed number much much lower.
Re:DNC (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:If in the UK... (Score:3, Interesting)
It was in his sig and journal for ages.
If I recall he bought a new top end PowerMac and Cinema Display with it.
Digital Fax Modem with internal memory or ... (Score:5, Interesting)
A better idea is to install a tolled number as your fax number. You can actually do both. Fax modem *and* tolled number. 1/2$ per call. Then post your fax number everywhere. Instant profit. You'll have ROI for your fax modem in an instance. You get just get the best there is with no need to worry. Zyxel used to have some with internal memory that ran on their own with no PC needed. Refinance your real customers who fax you stuff in their next bills.
Re:DNC (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally, he printed out a couple of pages with large letters asking to please remove his business from their list, giving his name, fax and phone numbers. He then taped the pages together into an endless loop and faxed his request to be removed. I think he said that his fax log showed that it sent for about two hours before cutting off. Amazingly, he got no more junk faxes from that particular spammer.
What about when you don't have a fax machine? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Removal doesn't help (Score:2, Interesting)
Next time, put in the FCC's complaint line phone number.
Use a call blocker (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.privacycorps.com/products/ [privacycorps.com]
I'm surprised that more companies don't sell things like this. If it were cheaper and sold in box stores everyone would probably have one. It's a little pricy, but I love the results.
How can faxes be legal, if so easily spoofed? (Score:3, Interesting)
But do people not realize how easily they can be forged and spoofed? The facsimile machine is technology from the 80's that has no authentication mechanism. It would be so easily spoofed with a fax modem! You could set up a fax that would seemingly come from, say, the office of the CEO, with letterhead and fax header to correspond, and even a signature would be a simple matter to attach.
Not long after Win2k came out, there was some situation where I had to send some fax with my signature on it to some company --something about giving written notice to my cable company that I really did want to stop my cable service, or something like that --I can't remember now. But I had no fax machine, just a digital camera. So I signed a blank sheet of paper, photographed my signature, pulled the photo into the computer and posterized it into some 4-bit grayscale with GIMP, stuck it into some OpenOffice.org letter, and then printed it to fax via Win2k. It worked, and after that I kept the PNG image of my signature around in case I had to use it for something similar.
Does that still work? It's so easy to manipulate a digital image of people's signature nowadays. The signatures of some corporate executives are even freely distributed! You get junk mail saying, "Dear [insert your own name here]: I am writing to personally tell you how much we value you as a customer, [bla bla] signed Joseph L. Presidente, CEO, Fortune 500 Company" followed by their frigg'n signature. How hard is that to cut&paste into some fax to some hotel saying, "To Whom It May Concern: I verify that I, Joseph L. Presidente, have agreed to pay all accommodation expenses incurred by [insert your name here] during his stay," or something similar.
The facsimile is a valuable tool, but the authority which people attach to them is misplaced. People need to get a clue about digital signatures, or deal with being a victim of social engineering.
Re:Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember it's the VOICE number in the FAX you want to attack.
Re:Nice urban legend (Score:4, Interesting)
However, there may be a way you can apparently spoof it, if the far-end user is sufficiently dim-witted. But it will probably only work for phones, not faxes. Like any phorm of phreaking, this one relies on telephone company greed to succeed.
The old Nynex / Cable and Wireless phone lines avoided patent issues (and coincidentally made sure their equipment would be incompatible with BT's; though manufacturers would soon see a gap for a phone with built-in caller ID display and include both systems in their phones) by using a different method of sending caller ID, which was a burst of DTMF tones between ringing voltage bursts. If someone's telephone supports such dual-mode caller ID (it'd've been labelled "BT and cable compatible"), then you can send DTMF digits from the calling end immediately after the line has been picked up and they will show on the screen.
Obviously that won't work for most people, since it's usual to look at the caller ID on the phone first, then pick it up (or let it ring, as the case may be). The called party would have to be in a hurry, or expecting a call from a known person, to pick up the phone without checking. Furthermore, you can only spoof the number that appears on the screen of the telephone, not the number you hear when you dial 1471.