Death of the Fax Machine

Having lunch with my 12 year old son - who’s back to a brief spell of remote schooling - he asks what a “fax number” is…haha which I explain. Obviously kids of today really won’t have a clue. I dare say the landline phone handset will be next.

Anyway I did still a have a fax until a few short years ago (went to integrated copy machine then to virtual / eFax) but it’s use became so infrequent it wasn’t worth the ongoing expense.

How many folks still use one? Other than health care and patient scripts (where he gleaned the term) are there any other industries that still hold on to this once mainstay of 80’s and 90’s corporate comms worlds I wonder?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

How many folks still use one?

Went to the tip a couple of years ago, although I can't remember when it was used prior to that.

I have a vague memory that a faxed copy can still be used as a legal document, whereas a scanned/copied one cannot - could be 20 years out-of-date

Worked with a company a while ago and struggled to get faxing working with a SIP ATA and provider that was meant to support it, so they just quietly dropped the fax number from their contact details and if anybody asked they just said they didn't have a fax and to email instead. Didn't cause any problems.

Still in use in the gold ol' US of A!

I thought they were meant to have advance technology?

Oh gosh yeah. Fax machines and ATA’s aren’t always an easy marriage.

My old HP 'PSC' with fax was one of my favourite printers, when building a house about 15 years ago it was indispensable as builders merchants at the time always used them, we had a narrow escape once when gf asked for the t&c's of insurance to be faxed over, fortunatly only had about a dozen sheets of paper loaded.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Obviously kids of today really won’t have a clue. I dare say the landline phone handset will be next.

Next time you see your son composing an email, ask him what he thinks "Cc" stands for and where it came from

I used to have to send a printed report out to several hundred colleagues on a weekly basis which meant 'cutting a skin' as we termed it before duplicating it on the Gestetner. My typing is still stilted by the strict rhythm you had to keep to on the teletype. What fun we used to have

Haha. Son no. 1 could explain the function, but had no clue what the letters actually stood for. Asked his slightly older sister and she ventured, “…carbon copy?” But I had to explain the history and where the ‘carbon’ came into it.

Then we got onto bcc…🤣

Quite frequently over the last few years, young children in properties I worked in would ask their parent what ‘that was ?’ ….. pointing to my test butt.

It looks like the internationally recognised symbol for a telephone doesn’t it ???

Another telling thing for me, is even very young children, when trying to make something work, can be seen swiping the object with their fingers.

I work in the NHS, and we have a deadline of March 2022 IIRC to stop using faxes altogether. They're calling it "Axe the Fax".

So even GP Practices and other healthcare settings should be using e-prescribing and e-mailed referral letters in the near future!

The Trust I work for already doesn't use faxes outbound, and only receives faxes from other organisations that havent ditched them yet!

Fairly recently our solicitor told me that some practices were still using the fax as it is considered more secure than email for certain purposes. Maybe the scammers don't have access to fax machines as even they don't know about them?

Our GP surgery still uses fax but then they are very old-fashioned. They even have the same old-fashioned doctors who know your Christian name and whom you can actually visit!

Don’t worry “they” know about them alright. It’s just that attention is focussed on to the most popular platform. I remember arriving into the office (admittedly this was back in the 90’s) to reams of “junk” faxes which had been received overnight. Spam fax 🤣

I believe its because its a lot harder to intercept a fax than it is to intercept an email.

Thanks
Dan

Perhaps it is still used in some circumstances because fax communication is direct end-to-end between the 2 fax machines (in the same way as your landline phone is), whereas I believe an email goes through various unspecified mail servers on the internet which can retain copies, so although you could spoof a fax to appear to have come from someone in the same way as a phishing email, it has much less risk of interception where there is confidential information involved & parties don't have secure encryption available.

In reply to a post by ConsumersFriend:

Perhaps it is still used in some circumstances because fax communication is direct end-to-end between the 2 fax machines (in the same way as your landline phone is), whereas I believe an email goes through various unspecified mail servers on the internet which can retain copies, so although you could spoof a fax to appear to have come from someone in the same way as a phishing email, it has much less risk of interception where there is confidential information involved & parties don't have secure encryption available.

My company still uses faxes for lorry drivers to send in their time sheets. Simple, cheap and efficient for those that struggle with technology. At HQ they are received by fax to email. If it ain't broken and it serves a purpose, why talk of the death of fax?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

If it ain't broken and it serves a purpose, why talk of the death of fax?

You could say that about a lot of communication (or for that matter any) technology that have disappeared or all but gone the way of the dodo...telegram, telex, teletype, dial up modems. Or more recently pagers and blackberry. I’m sure someone is probably still using the latter and some of the former, but they are a mere shadow of what they once were. None of them were/are ‘broken’ necessarily and they all still served worthwhile purposes, but they have been relegated.

That amuses me... seeing kids tapping on old LCD monitors on laptops etc and wondering why nothing happens

It’s even more amusing when your significant other moves between work issue Lenovo Yoga with touchscreen (marking up docs) to personal non-touchscreen MacBook Pro and instinctively swipes the screen. Nothing but smudges and finger traces. Muffled profanity ensues.🤣