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?
Receive faxes to computer, then print (Score:1, Insightful)
Solution (Score:5, Funny)
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Sorry but most thermal faxes worth half their weight have a high temp cutoff.
Yield for a toner based printing device is based upon 5% of coverage per page.
Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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Remember it's the VOICE number in the FAX you want to attack.
DNC (Score:1)
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.
Nice urban legend (Score:4, Insightful)
Another story in a similar vein is slapping those business-reply-by-mail envelopes on a brick -- recepient pays ALL necessary postage.
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It did indeed happen. I know someone that actually did this, slashdot user RockClimb (235954) and good friend for over 20 years.
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.
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> the line polarity reversal and before the first burst of ringing voltage.
Sigh, people who haven't even seen shinola trying to explain the difference.
All you need is a PRI circuit to spoof caller id. Because calls often originate at a different location from the terminal ID the call is leaving a pbx on most Bells (US at least) allow a PRI customer to put whatever they want in the fields that make call
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Totally depends on a) whether your telco has enough clue for that and b) whether you really NEED such an ability. Sometimes a phone system can get really spread out and and hairy. In the end, the PBX - Telco barrier is pretty close to a Telco - Telco barrier and not enough thought has went into securing those, until fairly recently they were always between big corporate entities and everyone prett
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We have two primary rate ISDN connections, i.e. 60 conversations plus two D-channels, and a few ranges of numbers (including some 0800 [free] and 0845 [old local rate, but you can't use any inclusive minutes on your tariff]) to go with them. These are
PC FAX for receiving. (Score:5, Informative)
Still costs lots of money (Score:2)
People are way more expensive than paper.
(Not that I'm advocating printing faxes on people).
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I hate email spammers as much as the next guy, but I can do a lot to stop
Artillery (Score:3, Funny)
It's polite to use small guns (37mm to 75mm) as a first warning, then if they persist bring in the 155mm guns.
The biggest troublemakers are no match to an Iowa-class 16" rifle.
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No, that's "polite request" (Score:2, Funny)
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The full version of the original begins "I say we take off and..", you can work out the rest.
Get Rid of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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In fact, I'm highly annoyed anytime I have to actually send a fax. My company's tuition reimbursement vendor requires faxes.. but get this... you have to go on the website to fill out and create a PDF form that you then download, print and fax back to them. And of course, when I go to use the stupid machine, its out-tray is filled with junk faxes.
Who needs this crappy technology from the 70s anyway?
Can't Get Rid of it. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who has to send a signed or legal documents quickly - a fax is the only option unless you send it via courier.
email now legal for some things in UK (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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 c
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And certainly faxes can be spoofed, but so can handwritten letters or typed documents.
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We had junk faxes to the amount that it represented 90% of what it was used for. Then we got rid of it. If they can't email it, mail it, or call us. Then we don't want their business.
Every car dealership relies on the fax machine to expedite funding of deals. Sure, you can courier the documents to their funding centre but that delays funding by as much as 24 hours and costs a lot more than dropping them into the fax machine. When each deal requires upwards of 15-20 pages, averaging 5 deals delivered per business day that's a lot of paper to scan, save and e-mail. In the end it's a lot easier to drop them into the top tray, hit the appropriate speed dial button and press "Go".
When yo
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:Removal doesn't help (Score:5, Informative)
SPAM becomes CAPTCHA (Score:2, Informative)
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You don't support customers who want to send messages on an 8-track. Why support them on outdated and pointless technology like faxes?
Glaring Market Hole (Score:2)
Show me the $199 freestanding fax-to-PDF-e-mail gateway. Seriously, I have an AIO Brother that has all of the necessary parts inside, but there's no software stack to do it. I know HP has several nice units in the $1500+ range. $50 bonus for hooking up to an LDAP directory.
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Given that we already have OCR technology working with SPAM filters that can detect even distorted text, [apache.org] it doesn't seem such an unreasonable idea.
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Next time, put in the FCC's complaint line phone number.
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And make sure you add the office, home, and mobile numbers of all your political representatives.
If in the UK... (Score:4, Informative)
Not a lot of help if you're in the rest of the world, but still - this could be useful to somebody!
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It was in his sig and journal for ages.
If I recall he bought a new top end PowerMac and Cinema Display with it.
Sue. (Score:3, Insightful)
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No lawyer wants to waste their time with this sort of thing because most of the senders are nearly untracable. You can waste your own time on it, but very few people actually even get the senders to stop.
I usually just sink the offending Junk (Score:2, Funny)
Digital Fax Modem with internal memory or ... (Score:5, Interesting)
A better idea is to install a tolled number as your fax number. You can actually do both. Fax modem *and* tolled number. 1/2$ 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.
Simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummmm (Score:2, Redundant)
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hit em back (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:hit em back (Score:4, Insightful)
I seriously doubt it. They are most likely using an auto-dialing script on a PC fax-modem so that they can cut out the cost and hassle associated with having a live person man the fax machine feeding it junk all day. And if you can actually get through to send a fax in the 1/2 second between numbers on the script, your fax will either be deleted, ignored or treated as a confirmation that your number works without ever going to paper.
You can bet these spammers have put more thought into what you can do to them than you have and have even experienced attempts at retaliation from other persons like minded to yourself. As such don't expect them to be vulnerable to such naive attempts at breaking their system. The best recourse is going to be either changing your number, setting up electronic reception of faxes or contacting relevant and credible legal authorities.
You can however (Score:2)
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Hit yourself back! (Score:2)
What about when you don't have a fax machine? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Else, get an X11 device or similar that will kill power to your answering machine between the hours of x and y.
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I don't know of a solution that doesn't cost money. I don't think the phone company will do anything for free. You could have your number changed, though depending on how long you've had it already it might be quite a bother and, again, more trouble than you deserve. You could disconnect your p
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Presumably he has a PC. Connect the phone to a modem (you can get a used modem for very little or free now; especially a 28k or 14k, which are still fast enough for fax). Dig up some old fax software (a few minutes with Google; though many modems used to come with a bundle of software including Winfax or an equivalent). Set it to auto answer after a certain time.
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I figured no harm done, as in a real emergency, my friends, family, and wife would call my cel
Live with it (Score:2)
If you can live with not getting purchase orders and the like faxed in, you can just turn it off. Email isn't a solution - it is unreliable. What is the difference between a company using email and a spammer, anyway?
Legally, you would think that someone would be able to stop a business from sending illegal faxes. The problem is that you, as the recipient can sue but the police
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Seems to have worked well for this guy: http://www.junkfax.org/fax/action/CA_how_to_sue.h
Take one for the team (Score:2, Troll)
You'll go to jail for a long time, but the chilling effect it has on the rest of the spammers out there will make you a fricking hero to the rest of us.
(if you're lucky, "the rest of us" includes your parole board. If you're super extra lucky it includes your jury!)
#include - this is Funny not Informative ok mods. Sheesh.
How about ... (Score:2)
It should reduce sentence times but still have the same chilling effect.
A couple comments (Score:3, Informative)
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
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).
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Solution - get new technology. (Score:2)
And even a bonus, this gives you a digital copy for easy archival to network backup, tape, optical media, or removable thumb drive.
Seriously a fax machine is really only useful for sending faxes now a days.
Removal number? (Score:2)
TCPA (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some good places to start... (Score:3, Informative)
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Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (Score:3, Informative)
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... was essentially rendered null and void by the Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005 [wikipedia.org], passed specifically to add the same "existing business relationship" loopholes previously enjoyed by telemarketers and spammers.
Be sure to thank your members of Congress, perhaps by fax.
Make a business of it! (Score:2)
One of the people in my neighborhood makes a living suing telephone-spammers. There are some tricks to actually getting a judge to rule in your favor - even when the company has clearly violated the law - but once you know them, it works well. And many don't even bother going to court, they simply send her a $500 check.
You can sue them. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Remove the paper from the fax (Score:2)
Though if I could, I would remove the fax altogether. Receiving faxes is rare these days...
Software (Score:2)
1. Open the Apple menu, go to System Preferences.
2. Open the Print & Fax preference pane.
3. Go to the "Faxing" tab.
4. Check the box "Receive faxes on this computer".
5. Fill in your fax number, set the number of rings before answering (depends on how you use the line)
6. Choose any or all of the available receiving options:
be a vindicative bastard! (Score:2)
Disconnect Tone (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Humans? this is for fax (Score:2)
Charge them. (Score:2)
I hope you don't pile on to those (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know the submitter is not a competitor or otherwise has malicious intent? Let the law handle it, don't do the same thing you're accusing them of doing. What's the difference between you? Intention means nothing when the actions are the same.
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Bullshit.
Let's take a simple situation: Man 'A' pulls out a gun and shoots man 'B'.
You mean to tell me there is no difference between the following scenarios:
1) Man 'A' is mentally disturbed, and not taking his medication. He thinks man 'B' is an alien. Man 'A' pulls out a gun and shoots man 'B'.
2) Man 'A' is a cop. He sees a punk (man 'B') beating up an old lady. he tells 'B' to dtop. 'B' reaches into his pocket and yells "I'll kill you, pig!" Man 'A'
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How do you know the submitter is not a competitor or otherwise has malicious intent? Let the law handle it, don't do the same thing you're accusing them of doing. What's the difference between you? Intention means nothing when the actions are the same.
Easy solution; phone the business (block your phone number first; *67 works here in Ontario, Canada), tell them you received an interesting fax about their business and gauge their reaction to it. If it's a positive "Oh, great, we were hoping that would work!" kind of reaction, feel free to publish their info on a "These People Are Scum Peddlers" website. If it's a "Oh, sorry about that, I don't know how it got there" kind of reaction you know where you stand.
Re:How Much do you need faxes? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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While it is legal on a fax in many places, it shouldn't be. Haven't any of these legislators heard of Photoshop?
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Okay... It's a lot harder to prove forgery on a fax, when a forged signature is indistinguishable from a fake one.
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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
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That's the right answer after all.
The head says that fax is a problem for the poster because it costs him money, not like e-mail spam. That means to me he doesn't count his time as money.
I'll make the assumptions that his "fax costs" come from paper and ink and that he owns at least a PC (or else he wouldn't mention e-mail spam). Well, then the answer is easy: don't use paper and ink. There're aplenty of "fax in your computer" solutions so you will see the fax on your co
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No, stop giving out your email address to every company that asks, and use a spam blocker (or an email service that uses a decent spam blocker).
And telemarketers keep calling me too, should I get rid of my phone?
Get a cellphone like everyone else. It's illegal for telemarketers to call cellphones. For the few that do, inform them of this and they'll take you off the list fast. I've had a cellphone (only) for years now, and it's extremely rare than I get a
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"stop junk faxes" [google.com] or "how to stop junk faxes" [google.com]
the very first page that pops up:
Basic information about junk faxes [junkfax.org]:
Do you...Want to have them pay you at least $500 and as much as $1,500 per fax?
"Many people get $2,500 per fax in small claims court. I recently got a judgment for over $40,000 for 16 junk faxes sent to me by an advertiser. The trial lasted about 15 minutes. Here's the proof it can be done: FirstChartered.pdf [junkfax.org]
Federal law applies in all 50 states an