Faxing is Still a Thing

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First, there were thermal paper faxes. They were amazing, definitely going to put FedEx out of business within the year. Then came plain paper fax machines. Wow. However, these fax machines had problems with the rollers. They would get a buildup of toner and the fax would get dirty while being processed. Also, small fonts didn’t resolve well.

Today, faxes are delivered via an e-mail fax service provider. Digital faxes are generally cleaner and faster than the old paper versions. Since they are delivered as a .pdf document they are easy to file on your local machine.

Faxing is very common in real estate, accounting and many small businesses. While the process of scanning a document would seem to be the best approach, it’s just easier for some documents to be faxed.

Interestingly, the old paper fax machines, connected to a phone line, are still used in some ‘secure’ environments. If the sender and the receiver both use a standard fax machine that scans paper, sends it over a phone line and the receiving person has it printed out from their fax machine, then there is no e-mail to intercept or hack. While the phone line could be tapped into, most hacking happens on computer to computer communications. Plus, once the fax is sent, there is no copy of it sitting on some server. It’s gone.

The 21st century fix to secure faxing is the HIPPA fax. It’s sent via e-mail but requires a separate log in to access the fax.

So, we don’t expect faxing to go away soon. And, apparently, neither will FedEx.

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