Fax Machine Or Service?

[jyl]

Every now and then, I seem to encounter the archaic concept of a "facsimile" aka "fax". As in, "I'll fax that to you" or "You need to fax that in".

WTF. I haven't owned a fax machine in at least a decade. I don't even have a landline. My office copier (Kyocera Taskalfa 3252ci) could have been ordered with an optional fax function, but I didn't.

So . . . I need to either sign up for an online fax service, or buy a cheap fax machine and get it to work over Internet (WiFi or Ethernet).

Which do you dinosaurs who still use fax recommend? Any tips?

I'll be sending/receiving maybe five to ten faxes a year.

[GH85Carrera]

My color printer is a copier, fax, scanner and printer. When my company was audited by the IRS I had so send and receive a lot of faxes and it was useful.

Now only my CPA finally is letting me use my One Drive and I can send him a sensitive document that way. He uses his One Drive to send me a document. I recently finally got permission from the wife to kill our land line phone number. I showed her the call log, an in 50 phone calls, 100% were sales or scams, not one real phone call, just BS.

I will watch this thread. I have always been very leery of the Fax services as to how secure are they. The only reason to use a fax is for the security, and it is still a legal document in the courts.

[stealthn]

Look at RingCentral.com

[Por_sha911]

https://www.efax.com/home-21-07-09

https://www.lifewire.com/free-fax-services-2378048

[Rick Lee]

I use myfax and I do it just about every day. It's a necessity in my job. Email doesn't cut it and I need a record of my requests with customer signatures on them.

[sugarwood]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I use myfax and I do it just about every day. It's a necessity in my job. Email doesn't cut it and I need a record of my requests with customer signatures on them.

Serious question. Why can't they use a scanner and email you a PDF of the docs?
Even scanners have been obsolete for 10 years, ever since cell phones have scanner apps in 2011.

[Rick Lee]

Because I have to fax forms to insurance companies all the time and they don't generally take these forms via email. Fax is just how it's done in this biz.

[jhynesrockmtn]

Govt. entities still use faxes pretty regularly. I spent a few years working in a social services agency and it was routine to use faxes to transmit docs with sensitive data. More secure than email is their rationale.

[jyl]

I signed up for a fax service (HelloFax). Checked out the ratings, this one seems ok and not expensive. Sent the faxes I needed to send. I would kind of prefer my own physical fax machine but pretty hard to justify it.

[id10t]

Serious question. Why can't they use a scanner and email you a PDF of the docs?
Even scanners have been obsolete for 10 years, ever since cell phones have scanner apps in 2011.

Because people think and the polices are written to say that the point to point nature of fax is more secure than the across the intertubes transmission of email.

This is because people have no idea as to how public/private key encryption and signing work, even though the technologies behind it are older than the consumer internet...

[id10t]

FWIW if you still have a land line you can still get a fax capable modem and "print" directly to it to send and it can be set to auto receive.

[GH85Carrera]

The biggest reason, in court, many times, over many decades, a faxed document has been accepted as evidence of a signature.

So inertia is a large part of it, "because it has always been done that way".

We we were audited, I had a choice on some documents, send it by registered mail, or a fax. Avoiding the post office is reason enough all by itself to use a fax. The IRS made the rules, I just followed my CPA's advice.

[Arizona_928]

Irs and physical mail. Lol