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Spam Government The Courts News

Fax-Spam -- What Can One Do? 63

Posted by Cliff from the we-don't-want-the-fax-m'aam dept.
phoneAlone asks: "Recently a friend has moved into a new home, where his phone number was previously used as a fax-line and receives a frequent amount of faxes all hours of the day and night. Attempts to contact the senders of this "fax-spam" and be removed from these lists are unsuccessful. What is your experience with fax-spams? What actions (legal or otherwise) can be used to combat this?"
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Fax-Spam -- What Can One Do? More

Fax-Spam -- What Can One Do?

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  • At the risk of suggesting something fairly dramatic, the individual in question may have to resort to changing their phone number (which may be disastrous for a business, or merely an extreme annoyance for a home). First, some other possibilities:

    1. Depending on the country, and phone company that we're dealing with, it may be possible to get the phone number(s) of the caller(s), and, while not blocking them, try to contact them. This could still be legit, despite first appearances.

    2. Try changing phone c
    • If this is a regular ol' guy just moving into a new home and getting a new phone number, I recommend getting a new number. He is going to be getting faxes to his phone day and night for years, and has only been there a short time (it sounds like.) As much hassle as it is to change numbers, in the long run he will be happy he did.
    • Could you sue the company saying that their 'wardialing' or 'hacking' caused you to change your phone number, and lose money in the process?

  • Beside changing the number (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @02:01AM (#7188258) Homepage
    Changing the number is obvious, but how about receiving faxes to a computer software? That way, paper is not wasted for one.

    And if the new location has phone lines too, try switching the fax and phone lines. You'll get plenty of beeping calls, but they should disappear as their sends will be unsuccessful.

    • And if the new location has phone lines too, try switching the fax and phone lines. You'll get plenty of beeping calls, but they should disappear as their sends will be unsuccessful.

      I think he already is using the line as a phone line, and that's the problem; the phone rings all the time with fax machines trying to spam him.

      Also, the fax machines will never try to stop sending, because much like e-mail SPAM, that list has been sold to many different companies. I've had a voice line that got fax spam, a

    • Sorry for restating the obvious, but it seems that the person already was receiving these calls to his phone (he may not even have a fax machine, for what we know).

      I know this problem myself. Periodically I would receive calls with nobody (just dead silence) on the other end. Last year I purchased one of these multi-function devices (printer, fax, scanner, copier..) and, stupidly enough, enabled the fax receiver (It would let me or my answering machine pick up the phone, then if it turned out to be a fax
      • Incoming fax calls are distinctive because they actually send beeps while they are calling (they actually start sending the beeps, synch tones, before the other line even picks up.)

        A dead call indicated either a modem (modems wait for the answering phone to respond with the initial synch tones, it is why a modem can tell if a person or a modem picks up) or the telemarketers predictive / predator dialing machines.

  • Call the Phone company (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iq in binary ( 305246 ) <iq_in_binary@hRASPotmail.com minus berry> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @02:04AM (#7188277) Homepage
    Tell them your situation (any half-assed phone co. would have records on hand to find the culprit number), tell them to block said number.

    If faxes persist, send the phone company a letter with a hefty dose of legalese, reminding them of the fact they are charging you for something you have already told them to stop. Companies tend to take people more seriously when they show resolve and are seemingly willing to settle the situation in court.

    At this point, the phone company is pissed and will turn it's efforts towards the culprit. Worked for me, should definately work for you.

  • illegal--phone company/FCC remedy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rmm4pi8 ( 680224 ) <rmiller@reasonab ... t ['ler' in gap]> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @02:05AM (#7188279) Homepage
    fax spam is illegal under the federal telecommunications statutes, with severe penalties, even to working fax numbers. the phone company is able to trace these numbers, so request a trace from them after explaining what is happening, if they refuse to provide it or after you have the number, contact the FCC or send a demand letter indicating you will be contacting the FCC.

    this happened to my parents; the above remedy does in fact work. best of luck!
    • Yeah that sounds good and all that but my experience at work is most of the fax spam we receive comes from outside the country. (Canada, Mexico, Barbados, Bahamas, etc.) At least that's what the caller ID says. We called the FCC when we started getting 20-30 faxes a night of 3 - 15 pages each. The FCC sent us a letter that they were looking into the complaint but they had no enforcement power over foreign countries.

      We couldn't change the number of our fax machine (don't ask me why) so we hooked it up to an

  • Bad advice but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by RALE007 ( 445837 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @02:11AM (#7188304)
    the one bad turn deserves another "jerk" part of me insists I say:

    1.) Acquire a fax machine.

    2.) Connect to above mentioned abused phone line.

    3.) Print three sheets of paper that contain the message in large obnoxious print:

    Stop Faxing Me At 555-(myphonenumberhere)!

    (or whatever you'd like to say)

    4.) Tape the top of sheet two to the bottom of sheet one, tape the top of sheet three to the bottom of sheet two. (this order may have to be inverted depending on how your fax machine feeds and scan pages (bottom to top, top to bottom) etc. Figure out the proper order to do step 5 correctly.)

    5.) Feed sheet one into your recently borrowed/acquired fax machine on the phone line. Dial and transmit to the offending non responsive party.

    6.) Once page one has transmitted, and the machine is working on page two, tape the bottom of page three to the top of page one so your transmitting fax machine has a nice three page loop of your message.

    7.) Leave fax machine and go to bed. By morning the offensive party will have dozens of copies of your message (as many as the number of sheets their fax paper tray contained), hopefully making enough of an impression upon them that fax spam truly is annoying, and they just might consider ceasing to do it to you.

    All in all, it's an old trick and I by no means take credit for it. It's a very immature act, and pretty much a bad idea. You would be just as guilty of harassment as the offending party. However, if all else fails....

    • Re:Bad advice but... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In the morning, when you're sober again, you'll realize that you just made a costly long distance call to fill up a few megabytes of harddisk-space on a spammer's computer. You sank to their standards and failed miserably trying to beat them at their game.

    • Sadly, no longer effective (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      These days, the best this trick will accomplish is to tie up one of the fax spammer's lines for a few seconds, and that's if anything is even set to answer on ring. Most bulk faxing nowadays

      a) is done with computers, not with fax machines, thus there is no paper/toner on the spammer's end to waste

      b) is done by someone with enough lines that tying one up won't affect them

      Bulk faxes typically come from places who have set up an operation to perform that specific task and then contract their services out to
    • Guy on a forum I read did something similar.. saved the goatse guy picture, converted to grayscale, pasted it into Word a few hundred times, used the Windows Print to Fax stuff, and off he went. He said it got to page 124 before he lost the connection.
    • ha... i didn't see your comment... this is called a fax snake... see my comment below. it is illeagal, but a fun prank sometimes. this was one of the original fax hacks.
    • "Print three sheets of paper that contain the message in large obnoxious print: Stop Faxing Me At 555-(myphonenumberhere)! (or whatever you'd like to say) "

      I once did something similar for e-mail price list spam. Some company kept spamming my business address with their latest hardware price lists. Reasonable methods to contact them and request removal had failed.

      So I created a 700K image with nothing but the word REMOVE in it and sent it to them. I never received another e-mail from them after tha

    • if so, try what I did for my boss at a computer company a few years ago.

      dust off your old BBS-client software, plug their sales response number (if 800, mind you.) into your software phone book, and set the retries to 99 (or 999 if you can). then script the thing to keep dialling the number all night.

      800 numbers are charged back to the owner on a per-call basis. even if it's just a 3-5 second delay, then a hang up.

      Charge THEM for your time using the same medium that they are. There is an elegance in ey
  • Ya know, federal law states that you can collect $500 for every unsolicited fax you receive at your number, and if you can show that the fax was sent knowingly to one who didn't wish to receive it, you can receive treble damages in the amount of 3 times the statuatory penalty, or $1500. you could quit your job and just collect money from junk fax judgements.

  • Google? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Micro$will ( 592938 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @02:46AM (#7188418) Homepage Journal
    The first result was junkfaxes.org [junkfaxes.org]. Another site [junkfax.org] is starting a class action lawsuit againt fax.com, one of the most previlant junk faxers. Fax.com also happens to be the scumbags faxing my line at least once a day, even when I shut off the fax machine.

    The bottom line is you can't do it alone. The only way to get any results is to join a class action suit, or get the FCC involved. They will either fabricate evidence to stall and/or increase you legal expenses, or if you do win, they will just refuse to pay. I have no time right now to bother with this crap, so I just save all the faxes and hope I'll get a few bucks when the class action suit goes through.
  • When we moved to our current house, Verizon issued us a number that was still listed in the yellow pages (printed about... 5-6 months earlier) as the number for a local ball-bearing company. (In fact, the number is still listed on various online directories - it's 808-935-6496; feel free to Google for proof.)

    After a week of getting phone calls every frickin' weekday morning from well-meaning folks who wanted to buy ball or roller bearings, I scrounged up the correct number for the company and started giv

    • After a week of getting phone calls every frickin' weekday morning from well-meaning folks who wanted to buy ball or roller bearings, I scrounged up the correct number for the company and started giving it out.

      So how did you answer? Did you yell to them, "I have no balls!" :-)

      Actually, it happened to me. I feel your pain. First I got a number that was very close to the sales dept. of a local pipe and welding company (only they were in a new area code). Once, I got a particularly nasty call at 6AM: a guy

      • ...which formerly belonged to a professional nurse who left the profession. So now I was swamped with calls of panicked geezers asking me why I didn't return their calls about an injection or an urgent enema. That was progress.

        Are you sure she was an actual nurse, or someone who just dressed up in the costume? ;)
  • If you can find out THEIR fax number, fax them back a black sheet of paper--this will use up all THEIR toner and will make YOU feel better!

  • Sue (Score:2)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 )
    Fax spam is a tort. You can sue the originators. Talk to a lawyer.
  • I listen to Tom Martino in the evening. His website is www.troubleshooter.com. You can listen to it streaming at www.1190kex.com from.. oh I think it's 7pm pacific to 11pm. (I'm doing this from memory, sorry if I'm in error.) Basically, it's a nation-wide radio show devoted to helping the little guy. It's an interesting show because when a company does something wrong, this show works to right the wrong.

    Tom Martino *hates* fax spam. So he had a website set up dedicated to busting fax spam. Basically, y
  • I clerk at a hotel, we get a fax to our main number every now and then, I just put the fax calls on hold. They are the ones paying for the call, we have 5 lines in so I'm not blocking incoming cals, let them spend a little more money on the call than usual. The fax machines try to connect for about 2-10 minutes and hang up.

    What would be cool is a getty hack that would keep re-handshaking on the fax, so you are in a perpetual handshake state with the fax on the other end. Get one of those boxes that will sp
  • I had just this problem when I moved into my previous house - we were getting 5 or 6 fax calls per night, at all hours. Unfortunately, I couldn't just rip the phone out of the wall, as I needed to be contactable by work also.

    Luckily, here in Britain, I was able to through our number in on the Facsimile Preference Service [fpsonline.org.uk] which put a stop to it almost immediately. Any further faxes then would have landed the sender a rather large fine for each one they send.
  • a couple years back I had the problem the other way round, only one phone line but needed phone and fax
    I used a phone/fax-switch for that problem then.
    For example: http://faxswitch.com/sr_next.html (no advertising intended, just an example. Really.)
    Something like this might stop at least your phone from ringing all the time.
  • Change phone numbers. Not much is invested in the new number (since it's new) so change it. Much easier than tracking down the faxers. Try to get the phone co to pay for the transfer due to "quality of life" issues.
  • A friend of mine had this problem once, so what he did was to take a plain piece of paper and write something like 'Call xxxxxxxxx to make this stop', then faxed this to the number that was spamming him and as the top came out, he quickly cellotaped it to the bottom of the paper, making a continuous loop - note this would only work using a cheapish fax machine that works with rolls of fax paper.

    After about 10 minutes or so, he received a call from a pretty hysterical person, who seemed to have the idea tha
  • Fax.com Fined $5.4 Million [slashdot.org]

    Fax-Spammers fax.com Sued For 2.2 Trillion [slashdot.org]

    You've attempted to contact the senders unsucessfully (its not stated whether you were successful in contacting them or not, and they just didn't bother to remove you from your list). Send them a letter stating that for each fax you will seek damages allowed under US law ($500/fax). This should scare some away, and you might be able to nail a couple in small claims court. Also, join the class action lawsuit against fax.com, they might b

    • Found a press release by fax.com in response to the $2.2 trillion lawsuit (Google cache as fax.com apparently took it down):

      Fax.com response to lawsuit [216.239.39.104]

      Quote from the article:
      "... Katz refutes such charges and says that any recipient who wishes not to receive fax advertisements need only call the toll free number that appears on every fax distributed by Fax.com in accordance with California law"

      Yeah right! If it was only that easy to remove yourself from their lists.

  • If you can get the numbers of the offenders....

    SUE THE BASTARDS

    Unlike spamming, there are very clear laws about junk faxes. If you have contacted these assholes and they refuse to stop, they are in violation of law, and you can file against them.

    Nothing says "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP BOTHERING ME" like a summons to court.

    Of couse, the prerequisite to this is:

    HIRE A LAWYER RATHER THAN BITCHING ABOUT IT ON SLASHDOT!
  • A picture of the goatse.cx guy with the caption "This will be you if you don't stop faxing me"
  • By mistake some user entered in the wrong fax number for a company in our system. Some poor woman in Alaska was receiving these calls in the middle of the night from us. Eventually, I had a call from an ATT&T operator reach my desk as head of I.T.. She gave me the number that we were erroneously faxing to, and I tracked it down in the system. I called the woman to apologize personally. I would suggest your friend contact their phone company and explain what is happening. The phone company will t
  • One alternative that I favor is to 'fight back'.

    I've had instances where my land-line voice phone has rung at 10 minute intervals over and over again and a fax machine was on the other end of the line. It was obvious that someone thought it was a fax-answering number.

    My solution, and one that I've read about elsewhere, is to figure out what number is calling (dialing #69 has worked a few times in my case) and send 'faxes' back at them. If you have a Data/Fax modem on your system or one you can use (I us
    • My solution, and one that I've read about elsewhere, is to figure out what number is calling (dialing #69 has worked a few times in my case) and send 'faxes' back at them. If you have a Data/Fax modem on your system or one you can use (I use ADSL for internet now), set up a few multiple-page solid black documents to send back at them. If you use Windows 2000 it is trivial to set up the 'fax services' like a regular printer.

      This isn't good advice, don't do this. As you can read at many places in this artic

    • And it'll do absolutely nothing but tie up the phone line (costing you money if it's not a toll-free number) if the fax is received by a computer. Even if a fax spammer started out using a standard fax machine to receive faxes, it would probably only take one of these to get them to switch to a computer and render the attack ineffective.
    • If it's a computer (it usually is), random hashes are better, due to compression.
  • Like most problems, this one has a social fix. Call the phone company, patiently explain your situation, and politely ask for a new phone number (if by then they don't offer the suggestion themselves). They probably won't charge you a dime.

    You might be too antisocial to handle making a phone call to the only people who can actually solve your problem. In that event, there's a couple of rational ways of living with it:

    Invest a few dollars in a voice/fax switch; install in an appropriately out-of-the-way
  • And though it took a little while, it certainly solved the problem...
    I was getting the fax calls primarily in bursts - every week or two, but when they came, the machine would apparently retry each 15 minutes for the first hour, then every hour or two for a while... even if this was during the wee hours of the morning. This particular fax machine would also leave voice mails "beep....... beep....". Not real good.

    I ended up running *57 traces on them, and calling the phone company's Annoyance/Harrasing Ca
  • Two years ago I used to get 3-5 fax spams a day at my home, and about 10-15 at my place of work.

    I added out telephone numbers to the fax marketing opt-out list at www.dma.org.uk and in 60 days they had stopped dead.

    I have had two junk faxes in that entire time since then. If only others things in life were so simple.

  • When somebody calls you after you ask them not to, especially if it wakes you up all hours of the night, that is harassment.

    He should use caller ID to find out who is doing it (sounds like he already has). Contact them. If it happens again, file in small claims court.
  • Almost all US phone systems now have Call Blocking. When you receive an incoming fax call, hang up, and then pick up the phone and dial *60, and follow the instructions. You will never ever receive a call from that number again. Anyone who dials you from that number will be intercepted, and not get through. Problem solved.
    Warning: I heard that there is a charge for this service, something like $1 per blocked number. I've never used it, so call your local telco for details.
  • if you can trace the phone number and the owner of tat number refuses to listen to you, send them a fax snake.

    what is a fax snake? tape at least three pieces of paper together at the long ends. write a nice message asking to remove you from their list the long way across all three pages. feed the first page into the fax and senf it. as the first sheet comes out and the last goes in, tape the first to the last.

    Let this run all night. in the morning, the owner of the nuber will have hundreds of sheets o
  • You have to pay, but you can dial a code to trace the phone numbers that the calls are coming from... the code is *57 for Verizon in NY.

    Then you can call the police and have them take care of it. Spam Faxing is a crime... and you might end up making a few thousand dollars out of the deal!
  • the fax machine here in my home office gets flooded with fax spam, currently it all goes to the computer 9it's a canon multipass laser), gonna hopefully switch to WinFAX pro soon but all i do is push DELETE.
  • I got 2-3 junk faxes a day. I recycled 'em, but after a while it just bugged me.
    I actually just used the opt-out 800-number at the bottom of each one, and within a week I was down to ZERO junk faxes. In the past year, I have had exactly one.
    Note that this isn't the same as "attempting to contact the sender" -- the sender couldn't care less. The vendor couldn't care less. But the opt-out system seems to have real impact on the phone number lists.

    There ya go. Not nearly as entertaining as the brainst
  • Just call your local attorney general for advice.

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