Can somebody tell our bank about this?

They insist on sending payment advice documents by fax and not by any other means so we have to maintain a fax-to-email connection.

That's because faxes have a status as a legal document, that not all (in case I've forgotten one that does) electronic communication equivalents do not...yet

Email does have legal status. But you need to retail the full headers etc.

> Email does have legal status. But you need to retail the full headers etc.

Its all data, it can all be faked. Somehow you have to prove the headers are genuine but most likely they just say they will accept them as genuine so that they can move on with the case.

Yep, lost count of the number of fax software kludges I've had to support over the last 20 years all 'cos financial services companies still insist on transferring certain docs over fax protocols.

The utterly stupid thing that gets me is that we send emails to an internal emial address with phone number, which is a PDF-to-fax converter, send them over TCP/IP to another fax software kludge at the other end that converts them back into PDFs and attaches the bloody things to an email!! FFS!

It is not just financial services, it is also (in the U.S.) medical records and providers.

And there's a reason, of course, and I've said it before to the denial (and downvotes) of people here: only a fax transmission has a [reasonable] level of trail of custody on the data. What comes out a fax machine at the receiving end is, reasonably assumed, to be what went in on the other side.

We can't say that with any certainty digitally, it can be intercepted and / or modified far easier.

Update the fax number by giving them your Telex number.

By who?

I worked for a company that had a 1-800 fax number and the amount of wrong numbers that called it was laughable. In the 2 years I worked there during the 90's it received nearly 2000 faxes ranging from tax forms to divorce papers even with custody agreements. Occasionally there was one of those mysterious love letters or treasure riddles or children's homework or pictures of just feet! Good times.

Japan.

Old people in Japan don't trust email, and it's still a country where if it's not written down on a piece of paper somewhere, it doesn't exist. Also, the requirement to sign things with a physical stamp.

(not really relevant for the UK, I realise)

So that we get to hear, "UK communications regulator Ofcom is consulting on whether it should end the requirement for telecommunications companies to support the services necessary to send viruses and malware."

So, erm, any data connection? Or am I missing something very obvious here?

I'm missing it too. The only thing our works fax used to get was loads of business spam - especially for car leasing.

I recall, earlier in my career, that I had a monthly task that involved sending a three page fax to about 10 shipping companies, in various locations around the world. The one going to Algeria I knew would always be a pain, as it would take about four or five tries before the damned thing would eventually go. The whole process would take a couple of hours, standing at the fax machine (with legs getting increasingly stiff) and sometimes I’d have to give up on a number that wouldn’t connect, and try again the next day.

So imagine my delight when email came along, and I was able to set up a ‘mail-merge’ from Word to Outlook, and the job was reduced to about 10 minutes of blissful pointing and clicking, from the comfort of my desk.

Suffice to say that the fax machine was a component of my working life for a few years, but it’s not something I miss or regard with particular fondness.

Around 30 years ago the company I worked for was doing a deal with India. The entire contract had to be faxed to us, in one go, all 96 pages, they were adamant they couldn't send it in sections.

After about the fifth attempt, and it getting late in the evening, we came up with a cunning plan. As we'd got over half of the contract we asked them to fax it in reverse order, which they did. We still didn't get it all in one go but at least we had all the pages and could just put them together. The other end were happy that they'd sent it "all at once" ignoring the error report.

I really don't miss faxes!

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the NHS still send a high volume of faxes. After all they kept using pagers long after everybody else stopped.

They still do use them in at least one Hospital my eldest has worked in recently, when on-call for multiple wards on the night shift.

Partner is on-call for a government dept.

They stopped using pagers.

They bought a stack of iPhones

Now anyone on-call has to sign out an iPhone, and it's special charger and they have to be carefully tracked cos they cost $$$$

And they don't get a signal out here in the wilderness so they are looking at getting SPOT sat beacons for people in the field

Pagers are still in regular use at all big hospitals.

They emit no RF, so are safe next to ECG's, EEG's, and they guarantee to cover right into the depths of the building.

By a similar token, faxes are a simple, well-understood backup between pharmacies, hospitals, GP's and the like.

They have an extremely low "attack surface" and do not require schooling in the many risks associated with email and internet.

It pays to have multiple backups, the internet can break, phone systems normally don't.

It wouldn't be beyond wit for the exchange to detect fax tones and act accordingly, whether it's a DSP decode, a higher bandwidth Voip line or whatever.

I see it just as BT looking for cost savings they'll then keep, ta very much - like being allowed to charge line rental in advance, the c***s.

What do they mean "provide" fax services? The telephone providers are in the business of providing a sound link from point A to point B; as long as that exists, you can send a fax, as faxes are - like any other data sent over a 'phone line - just data encoded into sounds. If you can /speak/ over a phone connection, you can send a fax over a phone connection.

weeee wah weeee wah kudung kerdung bzzzzzz weeeee...

But once everything telephonic is digital (VoIP) the problem of transmitting ' weeee wah weeee wah kudung kerdung bzzzzzz weeeee... ' potentially arises because out of order delivery and variable latency may screw up fax (for example, I'm not sure how tolerant it is of timing jitter). These characteristics of IP do already not infrequently cause glitches in voice comms.

I agree. AFAIK it is all basic tone dial stuff, so if you can make a call on a phone, then a fax, or even an old style modem, should be able to make a connection. Is there something weird in dial tone recognition that would case a problem for a fax machine on an IP based line?

VoIP networks are optimised for voice, so are not very good at transporting FAX or modem tones unless they have special functionality to do so. That special functionality is a pain to maintain, so networks would rather stop supporting it. It’s a lot of complexity for very few calls.

For example, the very first beep is to disable the echo cancellers which make speech calls sound better, but breaks fax/modem. VoIP networks tend to use CODECs to save bandwidth, which sound great for speech, but again kill fax/modem transmission.

Personally, it’ll be great to see the back of FAX, dial up internet/modems and MMS ASAP.

But even if you ditch Fax, there is still TTY for deaf people, or has that been binned too?

If you can /speak/ over a phone connection, you can send a fax over a phone connection.

I was thinking that, modem too, but I also recall there's clever processing in audio-to-digital encoders which can filter stuff out to enhance voice audio.

I presume the current rules are 'fine, you can do that, but it must not bugger up fax tones' and the proposed change will remove that requirement. It doesn't necessarily mean fax won't work, but there will be no guarantee that it will work, no requirement for it to work.

Some members of my family get monthly and 2 monthly repeat prescriptions.

All was working very well when GP surgery would fax the things to Boots branch, Boots would then text us to say prescription was ready.

GP (I believe) then stopped using fax following a directive from NHS Scotland and started posting the repeats to Boots.

At least 1 in 3 of these are now getting lost in the post, delivered late etc.

Why this stuff can't be sent electronically between GP and pharmacist even as a scanned doc say which is all the fax is really doing I have no idea, even following up with the scrip by post.

Very annoying situation and these are for pretty innocuous meds not the likes of Opioids scrips which presumably you really don't want to go missing in the post.

Have to chase Boots to see if they received the thing, then the GP when they haven't to see that they've actually remembered to send it.

Then Boots will get permission from the GP over the phone to part fill the scrip and wait on the post for the rest which means we have to make 2 trips to them.

My GP sends these electronically - not sure if it's different south of the border?

There is (maybe even more than one) electronic system in England & Wales for exactly this purpose.

A friend of mine who has recently left pharmacy was constantly frustrated by the inability of general practice to use these systems properly or even at all. And then there were the pharmacy managers who wouldn't hear anything about these newfangled ways of doing things and were left stuck in the dark ages. In the end we all pay the price for this kind of silliness as poor public service.

>In the end we all pay the price for this kind of silliness as poor public service.

Dear pharamcist, your mission if you choose to accept it.

Throw out the fax machine and install a new IT system

It requires Windows server with a primary and backup domain controller, which must support WibblePling 4.3 .45XYZ security

You need a Ploing certificate of at least XC3455.b.v2 subpara 4 which must be kept upto date as specified in ISO3141592654 part B

Please check with NHS IT policy directorate to ensure that none of these requirements have changed today

You are now responsible for securing this against Russian/Chinese/N. Korean/Belgian nation state hackers

The 4 local doctors surgeries, the 2 physiotherapy clinics and the 3 health authorities that you are on the border of all have different systems and you need to make sure your system works with all of them.

My wife used to run a small Pharmacy embedded in a Doctors building and then was a trouble shooter across a large area for one of the 'top 3' multiples. Everything was electronic at both ends of the size spectrum in England.

The only problem I've ever had using the service is due to the multiple sites served by the practice. If you visit the Dr. at one surgery many miles away (so that you can actually see a Doctor as the local one has no appointments) they will only dispense the medicines at that surgery and not your local one. So another 30 mile round trip is required!

Yep, mine too. My wife and I are on regular medication. I can see my GP, by the time I've walked the 3 miles home past the chemist they have the perscrition ready for me to just pay and take it. Repeats I get an email alerting me, I sign in to my chemist's website, select my stuff, pay by PayPal, wait about 2-3 hours for it to go via the GP surgery and usually get an alert by lunchtime to go collect it. No posting sign slips to the GP, no carrying bits of paper about with signatures, fast and efficient. People moan about the NHS but me aged 50 and my Dad ( now 82 ) agree it's infititely easier to use NHS services than it was 30 years ago!

Here’s a fun fax machine anecdote.

You may (or may not) recall that Nick Leeson, the original ‘rogue trader’, brought down Barings Bank in 1995, through unauthorised trading on the Singapore stock exchange.

His problems came to a head when an audit discovered a $78 million black hole in Barings' finances, and Leeson was told to send details of the missing $78 million to the auditors.

He forged the relevant documents (including his bosses’ signatures with crude photocopy/cut/paste), and sent them from his home fax machine, not realising (or forgetting) that ‘NICK & LISA’ would appear at the top of the pages at the destination fax machine… indicating the documents could be traced back to his apartment. Oops.

So now I MUST try to convince my solicitor to use GPG so I can actually send stuff safely to them.

Even S/MIME would be something, but no, today email is still as secure as a postcard.

FAX is great because very few could intercept it.

So implement GPG encryption and signing and we have a deal...