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Faxing is growing in popularity

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#81

Post by bluedino »

newhotelowner wrote: post #51
zamadatix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail delegation covers "anyone can send it out" and 'there is only 1 fax number". Automatically print covers "paper automatically appears" and "don't have to constantly check the email". What exactly are you hoping to modernize (other than "technology A has been around longer than technology B"). If it's hardware e.g. a physical fax machine with a physical line and you want to get rid of that line there are existing…

> "fax is insecure" Fax is not secure. Something like "Sender goes to the machine, and he punches my number or identification and it prints the document at my hotel"

Satisfies HIPPA. Something like "stand by the fax machine and tell the person on the other end they can send the fax"

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#82

Post by jaclaz »

simmons wrote: post #73
jaclaz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, I would add that it is (obviously) unheard of computer viruses sent by FAX, whilst - besides the "benign" (if we can call it so) spam - a generic hotel e-mail is bombarded by phishing attempts and more generally "check this attachment (enclosed invoice)" or "booking confirmation check the attached image for credit card number" kind of letters, so, besides the time needed to open the e-mail, the e-mails are…

It's not exactly a virus, but last fall some folks put together a PoC showing how certain fax machines could be compromised over the phone line, and used to gain access to their connected networks. [1] [1] https://blog.checkpoint.com/2018/08/12/faxploit-hp-printer-f...

Yep, IF the FAX is connected to network (some are, some aren't) and I would be surprised (even if the researchers do state that) that a "generic" exploit (meaning ALL brand/model of all-in-ones) is possible (maybe they would need a "library" of similar exploits and test them until they find the "right" one for the given brand/model at the other end).

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#83

Post by syn0byte »

JohnFen wrote: post #34

Faxing provides some advantages that can't be easily matched by competing communications tech: it's solid tech that works well, it can operate without requiring access to a computer network, it's cheap, it's dead easy to use, etc. I'm not surprised to hear that it is growing in popularity. I think that we'll find an increasing number of other "antique" technologies that will find a resurgence for the same reasons.

Not that solid. "POTS" lines only really exist at the last mile to customers, otherwise its all digital/VoIP. Plenty of places faxing will fail do to "line quality" issues. Fax only continues to work at all because the infrastructure takes great pains to keep them working.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#84

Post by velosol »

echelon wrote: post #79
cbhl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are jurisdictions outside of the US that transmit health records by fax to avoid them being subject to the USA PATRIOT Act when they transit routers in the United States.

Seems like you could fax an encrypted payload and just use the fax protocol for data transmission.

Possibly even attach it to another medium originally intended for data.

Also, I love your username in the context of this subthread.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#85

Post by vxNsr »

mywittyname wrote: post #71

> What happened was that competing companies deliberately created incompatible systems. Doctors’ offices and hospitals that use different records databases can’t communicate with each other digitally — but they can via fax. I cannot imagine why people prefer an established, well-documented, open exchange format over some closed, proprietary, and probably obfuscated one.

Says someone in a world where slack and facebook are prevalent.

The reason in this case is because the purchasing admin isn't the user and most certainly doesn't have a clue when it comes to tech, they liked the lunch the Epic rep provided and went with their gut (pun intended).

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#86

Post by tomjen3 »

newhotelowner wrote: post #21

Every single hotel that caters corporate clients in the USA still uses fax. We don't get reservations through fax, but that is the best way to get credit card authorization. A lot of corporate booking systems are automated to send out Fax for credit card authorization after they book the room online. Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax…

I have a cheap home scanner, which can scan and email by pushing one button, and (I think) just attaches a pdf. PDF pretty much is the modern version of the fax.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#87

Post by tomjen3 »

shados wrote: post #36
degenerate wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faxing is to email as VoIP is to the PSTN Until we can get over the threshold of assuming nobody has a fax machine anymore, faxing is here to stay. Once we push that threshold, the remaining users can be forced out (by not having fax as an option, and faxing will fizzle away over time). Think of it like supporting IE6. A lot of the holdouts for IE6 were large health care organizations and VA/gov centers... the same e…

Faxing is a headache for a lot of people. The problem is that the industries that use fax are in a position to force it on others. Certain healthcare departments, some mortgage related stuff, financial garbage, etc. Places where if you HAVE to do business with that entity for some reason, and the say "fax this to us", you're stuck hunting down a fax machine or using an online service. They thus have no reason to chan…

Depends. Quite often people think they _have_ to do as they are told, where you can quite often come back with an alternative.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#88

Post by yellowapple »

newhotelowner wrote: post #21

Every single hotel that caters corporate clients in the USA still uses fax. We don't get reservations through fax, but that is the best way to get credit card authorization. A lot of corporate booking systems are automated to send out Fax for credit card authorization after they book the room online. Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax…

> Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax number, and anyone can send out the fax and whoever is working at the front desk gets a printed copy without doing anything.

Seems like the answer here is to just have a "fax machine" but replace "phone number" with "email address" and automatically print any documents sent to it ("documents" being defined as the emails themselves and/or - if present - attachments in specific formats like PDF, DOC(X), ODF, etc.). Shouldn't be terribly difficult even for a DIY project, let alone as a full-blown commercial product.

A spam filter would of course be a given.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#89

Post by nradov »

mywittyname wrote: post #71

> What happened was that competing companies deliberately created incompatible systems. Doctors’ offices and hospitals that use different records databases can’t communicate with each other digitally — but they can via fax. I cannot imagine why people prefer an established, well-documented, open exchange format over some closed, proprietary, and probably obfuscated one.

Direct Project secure messaging is an established, well-documented, open exchange format that works over SMTP. It is specifically designed to replace faxing for the healthcare industry.

http://wiki.directproject.org/

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