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The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#51

Post by metildaa »

Zak wrote: post #50
metildaa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fax has a carve out in PCI & HIPPA compliance, and there is a huge existing momentum behind continuing to use fax. Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Many in the general public get frustrated with these walled gardens, as it is another login & interface to remember, and their credit unio…

> Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Oh bloody hell. Begin rant. We've had PGP for 27 years. Twenty seven years. Since 1991. Why the hell haven't we, the tech community, gotten the rest of the world to use it? I think the only person I've had a PGP-encrypted email exchange with is my mot…

I use PGP, but it is a pain in the ass to use, severely stunting its usr. Normal people can't effectively use PGP without significant training, hence no one outside some DMCA notice bots using PGP in production for the common person to see.

Even Riot with its fucked up key mismanagement is easier to use as a normie than PGP, though its looking like Riot will fix most of those trusted key management issues soon with the PRs that are about to land.

Signal is the gold standard for secure, easy to use crypto at this point IMO. Hopefully Briar continues to improve tho, normie friendly metadata free communication is highly alluring, and the key management is a middle ground between Riot and Signal.

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

cknight wrote: post #49

IT Manager of a large medical centre in Australia here. I've been spending quite a lot of time trying to minimise the number of faxes we send and receive but there's only so far I can go. Email and fax-to-email services are generally frowned upon by the relevant medical accreditation boards, as they consider these to be insecure unless PGP is used. Email addresses have the ease of use and interoperability that fax nu…

> I have been told specifically by the CEO of a large specialist group that they won't be using any of the above systems, because having the software available means they might get electronic referrals directly from GPs.This would be instead of paper referral letters that simply go with the patient. This changes the legal onus of who is responsible for following up with patients who don't make that specialist appointment when referred. It matters when a patient decides not go do anything with a given referral, and then finds out they're terminal months later.

Oh my. The unexpected legal implications and associated perverse incentives. Thanks for sharing that!

Reminds me of what I heard about information security space, where some large companies don't want to know their risks too well, as if something would happen, they wouldn't be able to say "we didn't/couldn't have predicted that".

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#53

Post by mrweasel »

If someone was to build a device that could clamp on to the phone line and listen for incoming faxes and copy the signal and sent it of to a remote server, would that force us to rethink the use of faxes? Sadly I think the answer is no.

One argument that could be made for the fax is the lack of availability. Some government office in Denmark have been known to email sensitive information to wrong email addresses, because of poor spelling. Some guy owns anders.dk and have a catch-all email address, and employees of the city of Randers sometimes do check that they actually typed randers.dk and not anders.dk. That guy receives have received a boat load of sensitive data. The solution is to block his domain in the citys Exchange server.... Yeeeah.

Neither fax, phone or email is particularly well suited for transmitting sensitive information, but the fax is seen as more secure, because when was the last time someone received a fax by mistake.

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#54

Post by gambiting »

vthriller wrote: post #27

To me, a person that doesn't (and never did) live in the US, faxes there seem to be even more ubiquitous than this article paints. Imagine my amusement when I registered an Amazon account only to get it suspended with the request to verify it by... faxing bank statements and whatnot. Internationally on a +1 number. [0] And yes, support was not been able to offer any alternative to that. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/…

Until literally 3-4 years ago, if you wanted to open an Apple Developer account from outside of US, you had to fill out a "payment form" with your credit card details and fax it(!!!!) to a US-based number for "verification". And no, Apple couldn't provide any other payment options for non-US residents.

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#55

Post by Zak »

metildaa wrote: post #51
Zak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Oh bloody hell. Begin rant. We've had PGP for 27 years. Twenty seven years. Since 1991. Why the hell haven't we, the tech community, gotten the rest of the world to use it? I think the only person I've had a PGP-encrypted email exchange with is my mot…

I use PGP, but it is a pain in the ass to use, severely stunting its usr. Normal people can't effectively use PGP without significant training, hence no one outside some DMCA notice bots using PGP in production for the common person to see. Even Riot with its fucked up key mismanagement is easier to use as a normie than PGP, though its looking like Riot will fix most of those trusted key management issues soon with t…

PGP isn't that hard to learn, and 20 years ago when the main form of online messaging was email, using a desktop email client, it was easier. It would be considerably harder now with everyone communicating in walled-garden platforms.

I think we really missed an opportunity, and I don't see a way forward to a world where PGP keys are a widely-used basis for security communication and verifying identity online.

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#56

Post by walterbell »

Zak wrote: post #50
metildaa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fax has a carve out in PCI & HIPPA compliance, and there is a huge existing momentum behind continuing to use fax. Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Many in the general public get frustrated with these walled gardens, as it is another login & interface to remember, and their credit unio…

> Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Oh bloody hell. Begin rant. We've had PGP for 27 years. Twenty seven years. Since 1991. Why the hell haven't we, the tech community, gotten the rest of the world to use it? I think the only person I've had a PGP-encrypted email exchange with is my mot…

IETF is working on a protocol for interoperable E2E encrypted messaging, https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#57

Post by Nursie »

mrweasel wrote: post #53

If someone was to build a device that could clamp on to the phone line and listen for incoming faxes and copy the signal and sent it of to a remote server, would that force us to rethink the use of faxes? Sadly I think the answer is no. One argument that could be made for the fax is the lack of availability. Some government office in Denmark have been known to email sensitive information to wrong email addresses, bec…

> If someone was to build a device that could clamp on to the phone line and listen for incoming faxes and copy the signal and sent it of to a remote server,

Pretty sure that fax-to-email gateways have existed at least since the early 90s, most consumer-grade modems could send and receive faxes (with software to save them as images). Hooking that up to an email sender seems trivial.

Hell, back in '96 an old friend needed to get a signed letter to the bank by close of business one day, so he used a tablet to sign a document and then the modem to 'fax' it over.

--edit--

I misunderstood, you were talking about a MITM attack to prove the insecurity of faxes. Ignore me, carry on :)

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#59

Post by alex_young »

mrweasel wrote: post #53

If someone was to build a device that could clamp on to the phone line and listen for incoming faxes and copy the signal and sent it of to a remote server, would that force us to rethink the use of faxes? Sadly I think the answer is no. One argument that could be made for the fax is the lack of availability. Some government office in Denmark have been known to email sensitive information to wrong email addresses, bec…

You can man in the middle a fax by walking into a phone closet a mile away from either party. Same thing with a voice call.

Don't send anything you don't want to post publicly via fax people.

Re: The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete

#60

Post by Zak »

walterbell wrote: post #56
Zak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Oh bloody hell. Begin rant. We've had PGP for 27 years. Twenty seven years. Since 1991. Why the hell haven't we, the tech community, gotten the rest of the world to use it? I think the only person I've had a PGP-encrypted email exchange with is my mot…

IETF is working on a protocol for interoperable E2E encrypted messaging, https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/

That's cool and all, but it seems to me this is more a problem of user adoption than technology. PGP provided a pretty good solution for end-to-end encrypted messaging, and a whole bunch of people who should really be adopting that solution are using fax machines.
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