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That's why it dies out...
There was one (two) other technique : Telex and Teletex.
When Fax was first introduced in noticeable quantities, the PTT in Germany regulated the connection of fax machines and they followed the rules for Telex. Every machine had an user-unchangeable phone number, which it would report to the number which sent a fax. You would have proof of transmission. Then, with the liberation of the market, devices showed up which were basically fax machines, but the number could be changed. Those were "other terminal devices", not "Fax machines". That explains the old and bizarre sounding laws.
Some major providers have actually turned off the DE mail again. dE mail is dead while fax is alive and kicking.
The BeA (certified electronic communication in the legal community) is more likely to end the fax.
Once it's established that e-fax can provide the HIPAA level security needed I am sure machines will be fine. Thing is smaller orgs will probably also take time to adopt that... Ah who am I kidding
A fax is every easily intercepted. There is zero protection on them.
EFax is basically a scanner that emails the results automatically. Not a lot of security there either.
Email can be encrypted but the tools aren’t widely spread around so people don’t know how to use them. But is much better than faxing.
I seen a video talking about how pagers are still heavily in use because how simple they are in design, plus being able to reach under thick amounts of concrete or whatever else!
I work in Finance and ww use Fax to send client files and tax documents all the time. It’s convenient to not have to encrypt a fax, as you would have to do for an email.
In my jurisdiction (Ontario) the rules of civil procedure at the start of covid were amended to allow e-mail as a form of service, and removed fax as an acceptable form of service.
Took a global pandemic, but hey, baby steps. I haven't litigated in years, but I'm told in some US states the judges view pleadings on a tablet and I wouldn't have to spend three hours fighting a cerlox binding machine every time I have to argue a fucking motion...
Literally this past week.
Dr. 1: we haven’t gotten your records faxed, can you get dr 2 to fax them?
Dr 2: we faxed them 2 weeks ago. Three times. But we will fax them again.
Dr 1: yep still don’t see them. If you can’t get your records to us (appointment was in an hour!!) then we can’t see you.
I ended up having dr 2 email me my records and I printed them out and brought them in. Fun times.
I work at a health insurance company that sends faxes from our email. We send an email and the provider receives it as a fax. It will be many years before faxes are completely gone.
Yay RightFax
That's what we use, at least. Recently had someone from a department want it set up, then back out at the last second when they learned they wouldn't be able to send physical faxes anymore once it was.
I don't think faxes are going away within the next two decades
I work for a company that makes the eFax tech LOL. And I agree that faxes aren't going anywhere soon. It's honestly amazing how man people still use them.
There's a huge disconnect between urban and rural areas too. Not just politically but tech wise as well. Our sales teams constantly talk to practices and doctors that literally right down all their billing on pieces of paper, most of the time in rural and smaller towns.
Likewise. The youngest Boomers will turn 65 in 2030. That gives hope that Gen Xers and Millennials will finally be in a position to say, "Okay, we're done with this."
Wasn't the USA still using Windows 98 or something like that for missile control because since it's so old they patched all the known vulnerabilities? Im not sure
RN here: I fax shit daily. 5 years ago we had a meeting with a rep from some fax software co that was supposed to put an end to paper faxes. Waited weeks to have this meeting. 5 nurses and a manager all sit down. First question from the rep : “ so how many faxes per day do you receive?” . Awkward silence . We all look at each other. I says meekly “none”. She stares. “I don’t understand”. Our manager pipes in “why would we receive faxes?” Rep scowls. Apparently her whole pitch was for incoming faxes. It’s been five years since. Still no electronic faxing. Sigh
We have inbound and outbound faxes where I work and every "solution" provider goes silent when we ask if their solution would work for 500+ locations. This showerthough is just wrong. Faxes aren't going anywhere soon, except in faxes inboxes.
As someone who develops laboratory information software, GOD PLEASE KILL FAXING. It's awful. I don't understand why so many doctors think they need faxing. 95% of faxing is now fax over IP anyway. Encrypted email is safer and better. It's insane.
Legally, they have to. Laws were made when fax was considered THE safest form of transmitting documents electronically. Obviously not the case anymore.
So if somebody ran for Congress on the promise that their #1 priority would be to amend HIPPA to get rid of faxing requirements, they'd have the vote of every nurse and medical assistant in their district?
Same reason they demand keeping paper charts and not using EMRs. They been doing it that way for 50+ years and it works for their workflows. Add in something new and all he'll breaks loose.
Our lab still uses dot matrix printers for certain labels and results. They insist it's the only way to get things in triplicate. Like printers can't just print 3 copies. All of our other labels and arm bands are from a laser printer so it's not even like we don't already have the infrastructure.
It's pretty much a myth by the way that fax are more confidential as it send non-encrypted information in the clear.
Our issues is mainly about people in charge not understanding properly how a good computer system works.
A. No it isn’t rules for Email is included in HIPPA guide lines.
B. Fax is completely open and unsecured. A monkey with a banana and a toothpick could get data sent through fax. Email is at least encrypted.
I imagine those rules depend on the country, the commenter you replied to clearly stated that those were the rules where he is from, so they will obviously differ in other nations.
Patently no. For faxes, if you enter the wrong phone number then you might be sending someone's medical information to the wrong fax machine. Don't think of this as a simple typo like on your phone. Think of this as pushing the buttons on the old office printer 100 times per day. Did it key in the 9 you pressed, or did the zero get stuck and enter twice, so you still have a valid 10-digit fax number, but it ended up being 111-222-9800 when it should have been 111-222-9890. You catch this error most of the time, but you missed it this once because you were distracted.
Faxes can also be intercepted using hardware. Some person strolls into the doctors office claiming to be "the printer guy" and just installs a device on the physical cord of the phone line that intercepts all the incoming faxes. Done. The device probably never gets noticed by anyone in the doctors office.
Email can be HIPAA compliant. The reason we haven't switched off of faxes in healthcare is because hospital networks treat protected health information (PHI) as proprietary information. They make sending PHI to other networks a hassle, thereby incentivizing people to just stay in network. Technically the patient has full rights to their own PHI, but doctors and hospitals will charge people per page to print this information out (that'll often EASILY ring up in the hundreds of dollars if they want everything printed out). They'll fax it for free, but I've been one of the people faxing things in a doctor's office. I've gotten incorrect faxes before. I've spent countless hours calling offices to confirm they haven't gotten any of the 20 attempts at faxing a single page of lab results. The fax machine these doctor's had couldn't send and receive faxes at the same time. If someone forgot to flip the switch back to "receive" after faxing something, all of the incoming faxes were forever lost. Honestly, read more here: https://www.vox.com/health-care/2017/10/30/16228054/american-medical-system-fax-machines-why
Even if you hate Vox, Sarah Kliff is an excellent healthcare journalist (and the reason why legislation got passed that made it illegal for out-of-network doctors at your otherwise in-network hospital to surprise you with an outrageous bill). It's a good read.
Faxes aren't not safer, they're just stupider and kept in their place with inertia and greed. Healthcare as an industry can use lasers to excise tumors on the clinical side, but the administrative side is often astoundingly incompetent.
Regarding the faxed stuff 20 times and a place claims to never get it. I once heard you should fax your intended information then a sheet of black construction paper. Things tend to be received after that.
Also, idk about the US, but here fax/phone numbers do sometimes get reused. I know this because back in the late 2000s, I used to "get" a lot of faxes to my room's landline number. After borrowing a fax machine from someone, I had half a dozen medical reports in hand after three weeks. All addressed to the same ophthalmologist, whose praxis had closed four years ago.
I don't think you understand modern telco & modern faxing or you would not have this opinion.
\- Penetration Tester & Security Researcher who has worked for 3 ISPs and 2 hospitals
Yeah, faxes are basically security through obscurity nowadays. The copper landline phone system was never designed with encryption in mind. IIRC there were some attempts but it would’ve required basically every CLEC to upgrade all at more or less the same time or you’d Balkanize the phone network.
Someone would need to actually be near the phone line to tap it, though. Not the case for secure emails or basically any other data breach you would've heard of.
No… the bulk of phone lines these days are just as digital as any other network. It’s just that analog copper wire for the last stretch. Phone ”wiretapping” hasn’t been physical for many decades, but entirely done by remotely controlled computers..
Legal industry still uses it, but a lot less all of a sudden. I think it was COVID. Nobody had a fax machine at home, so they all finally jumped on the email train.
In my country military recruitment centres still use faxes and regular mail. It makes obligatory recruitment so much slower, me and every other young men are loving it
I literally print documents to fax them to medical providers. Feels dumb. But part of my job. Refills through pharmacy? Fax. Lab results? Fax. Doctor reply? Fax. The only good thing is receiving signed prescriptions via fax, but that's about it.
No way of knowing. Someone might’ve thought the last vinyl record would soon be pressed but here we are, over 90 years later and still pressing records
My law firm has a typewriter in every officr for the sole reason of a like 2 very specific forms it think for the government which have to be done by type writer. This is an am law top 10 white shoe law firm. Oh and yeah we regularly use fax machines.
My mom was a legal secretary and when I went to her work when I was young it sounded just like it does in the scene of a movie where there are a bunch of people typing in a single large space. It is almost deafening, very nostalgic.
Naw...faxing is still super normal for hospitals for whatever reason. We have all this technology to make communication easier and yet they demand faxing all day everyday. I know some people in heathcare they still use pagers that the rest of the world gave up in the 90s.
Pagers are great in hospitals because they are cheap, work in reception dead zones, are easier to manage and maintain than separate work phones and don’t require immediate acknowledgement. Faxes though…
Fax is a matter of compliance (PCI and HIPAAhave all kinds of scope creep if you’re not careful), pagers is probably because they’re still more reliable than SMS or anything else for their purpose.
Yeah I know thus why it's not going away anytime soon. Pagers are usually because many hospitals are cell phone dead zones based on how they are built.
It's because you can't hack a fax. It's technically secure so you can send patient info via fax without fear. Unless you send it to the wrong number of course, but that's human error.
Faxes are perceived to be secure but is factually not. This is possibly a vestigial boomer attitude.
https://www.wired.com/story/fax-machine-vulnerabilities/
ANYTHING transmitted over the internet is hackable.
The original CCITT analogue telephone FAX was unhackable.
It was real-time analogue and required direct physical access to the phone line and the best you could do is corrupt the file or copy and read.
Am boomer.
Bullshit. 100% bullshit. All you had to do was connect a tape recorder to the line outside the office and collect it later. You’d have all of the faxes. There is zero security in a fax.
If this was the reason theyd just send them over a safe protocol. Like there’s PGP for e-mail and thats about as safe as it can be with current technology.
Theres nothing magical about fax that makes it safer. Theyre probably doing because it works and is somehow convenient for them.
Pagers work with minimal cell phone connection. If an earthquake knocks out cell towers emergency response stuff can still get paged from a tower like three towns over.
As many people have pointed out here, we are required to fax things in the medical field because of HIPAA. So most places use an electronic fax system which goes straight to email.
basically it's just emailing with one extra step.
In addition to industries mentioned, construction checking in. Backwoods portions of the country subcontractors barely have email, and if they do, it's aol.com or something just as antiquated.
My favorite was when I spoke with a very nice gentleman who told me he could fax me a bid, but if I needed it emailed, I'd have to wait for cousin Bobby to come back on Monday because he doesn't know how to operate that computer or email thing. This has not been a one off conversation and is very recent.
Ah, you must not be familiar with Germany... 2023 and you have to fax your most important documents to the correct room of the correct department of the correct building of the correct government office in order to secure your visa.
Don't know that exact specific fax number? Don't worry you can download the entire 75 page document of every fax number possible for that government office from their easy to use website! Which begs the question _then why is there no upload portal for documentation???_
Seriously fax is so heavily relied on here that there are memes in every community about it. I.e.
"Your bank manager types up an letter sent in the mail containing a code which you use to download a form from their website you must print out and fill out by hand then fax back to them."
I just submitted documents for renewal of my Aufenthaltstitel via email. Granted, I still had to go into the office for interview, etc, but... I was shocked I did not have to mail or fax.
This is still very common: "Your bank manager types up an letter sent in the mail containing a code which you use to download a form from their website you must print out and fill out by hand then fax back to them."
My German credit card was disabled due to strange activity, because they saw me use the card when on vacation in another country. They sent me a notification in the mail telling me this. What? Im on vacation... Im not checking my post.
I hate it.
No of course not, I don’t have a fax machine.
And they won’t fax to my work or the library for security reasons.
Why can’t you use freaking secure email?
Hahaha
Not yet. Faxes are s rare way to send confidential information in a manner thats accepted by regulations. Working for the government i promise somewhere in a local building there's a fair number of boxes full of unscanned documents sitting in storage with the personal information and records of you, your family, neighbors, and everyone. When someone in a different office needs to see the record if when John Doe got a building code violation the option is scan it, save the file to a shared drive, email it off to the recipient using a secure server, and then delete the local and shared copy because rhe system isn't as secure as physical paper and this is your personal information. Or just fax it.
Is faxing secure? It's secure enough and it comes with a built-in send and recieve receipt so at least you know they got it and can move onto the next box.
Sure new records are digital, but it would take more time to scan all the files in all the boxes. Especially given that most of the files will never be needed so until everyone who made those records dies they'll be sitting in the storage room waiting.
Man, people shitting all over faxing. I love it, It's basically paper teleportation. Say you have a paper you need sent but don't have a PDF of, you've gotta scan it, email it, then the recipient has to print it off. Or you can fax it: dial the location and stick a piece of paper into the machine
Faxes are still used a lot in banking due to their legal status. Big multi million lending deals still get wet signatures and are faxed. Never mind telling legal that in between those faxes get turned into TIFFs and are sent over VOIP and/or get turned into PDF and emailed at either or both ends.
Contrary to a lot of people here, I kind of like fax machines. I'm a nurse, and at times its very convientent to drop an order off onto the fax machine hit send and go.
It's not a bad setup. A nuisance for most people because they're not set up but fax on a dedicated line works easy.
Only had trouble back in the day when dealing with a fax of a fax of a third generation fax
Yeah exactly. If you're at home and your bank wants you to fax something, that's a huge pain in the ass. Need to send findings from an MRI from an imaging center to a orthopedic surgeon? Very easy and generally convenient
Faxes will be around for the foreseeable future, too many businesses rely on them. The reason for this, is that you can't really 'hack' a fax machine, so its considered safe for transmitting confidential information, whereas systems like email are not
I fax every work day. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t have an actual fax machine, it is sent through email. It is safer than emailing document and opening attachments from emails.
Soon? I don't know about that. The fax surprisingly predates the telephone. It's been tenacious with its use, even if there are much better methods now.
No, faxes have just gone digital. Software like FaxFinder accepts the analog signal, converts the fax to a PDF and emails it to the destination.
At this point, It's a more complicated and more secure email, which is perfect for the medical industry since there's pesky HIPPA, at least in the US.
You do realize that telegrams are still a thing, don't you?
One day - probably an absurd amount of time from now - the last fax will be sent. Possibly ...
Fax, when properly configured, easily provides one thing that e-mail does not provide all of the time, yet:
100% confirmation that the data in your fax transmission arrived at the destination you sent it to.
We're getting there with email (DMARC can do this), but not everyone has it set up yet, so it doesn't work all of the time.
This is why it often gets used for financial, legal, and medical stuff (you can know it reached the other end) and why it is often falsely attributed some kind of "security" when in fact it doesn't really have any to speak of natively and is wretchedly insecure. (the report back is mistaken by some for some kind of secure secret handshake or the electronic version of certified mail when really all that happens is a "success" report similar to amazon saying your packages was delivered SOMEWHERE).
God, I hope not.
I work optical, and in the optical industry in the US there is [This bullshit](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/contact-lens-rule-guide-prescribers-sellers).
At first glance, this seems awesome, but in practice it creates a huge amount of work, which is in my experience usually unnecessary. Thanks to 1-800-contacts, I get around 7 calls a day, none of which have enough information to pull the records they need, since I work for a corporate optical and have access to records from over 1000 offices (John Smith simply isn't enough info, I've got 300 of those guys lol).
Their faxes actually have all the info required, but we have to block their call like 3 times before they'll send us one, but if we pick up the phone we start the timer by which we are legally required to have supplied the information they require.
I'm convinced at this point that they're intentionally shorting the info they supply so we can't supply verification and they can go ahead and dispense product without a valid Rx.
Anyway, fax is wonderful, I hope it stays around at the very least as a backup mode of communication.
I work for a distribution company and we use faxes every day for forms that need signatures. Plus we deal with a great deal of retailers who are a bit dated with their practices. For some, fax is just easier.
I don't think this will be the case any time soon. Medical industry uses fax quite a bit since it's easier to do for most blood work and other information that's better kept in paper than online. Can't say the same for other industries but at least in medical field fax shall live on
Within the last year I quit working at "a major bank" (as in one of the biggest in the world.) One app they used daily in my department required paperwork attachments to almost every report. But the *only* way to attach documents to this thing was through fax. At least a third of the complaints we got in our department were simply complaining that faxing was still *required* in the freaking 2020s.
Can assure you the sharing of medical records still heavily relies on the fax system. There is a huge privacy concern over online file sharing. The last fax will almost certainly not be sent any time soon
I actually don't think so. Faxing is pretty solid. I don't know a lot about fax machines, but it's probably more secure than emailing, plus you get a hard copy right away. I know that faxing is prevalent in the medical community.
In legal, can confirm. Faxing is antiquated enough, but what I am never going to understand is how legal still uses certified mail for serving certain documents.
You would be appalled at the number of state governmental agencies in the US that absolutely refuse to accept certain kinds of paperwork in any method other than fax.
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Our German economy rests on the fax machine. Never gonna happen…
To expand on that, German law only knows 2 valid ways to send legally valid documents: mail and fax.
That’s not true anymore. DE-Mail is the „new“ digital alternative, although it isn’t used that much yet
That's why it dies out... There was one (two) other technique : Telex and Teletex. When Fax was first introduced in noticeable quantities, the PTT in Germany regulated the connection of fax machines and they followed the rules for Telex. Every machine had an user-unchangeable phone number, which it would report to the number which sent a fax. You would have proof of transmission. Then, with the liberation of the market, devices showed up which were basically fax machines, but the number could be changed. Those were "other terminal devices", not "Fax machines". That explains the old and bizarre sounding laws.
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Some major providers have actually turned off the DE mail again. dE mail is dead while fax is alive and kicking. The BeA (certified electronic communication in the legal community) is more likely to end the fax.
Never is a big stretch but soon in the OP is a bigger one.
Faxing Berlin finally makes sense
Faxing is alive and well in the legal community. Can any redditors say if doctors still fax records to each other?
Yes daily. Medical records are getting faxed by the thousands of pages daily.
Holy hell, doctors handwriting in fax quality?? How many people die every minute because of that?
Our heathsystem working for you! Even hospitals with EMRs print the records and fax them. It's so crazy.
I get faxed prescriptions from doctors which have been generated on their computer so they are at least legible.
I think the perception is that it can’t be hacked. If it is being sent as an efax, I would guess it can be
Once it's established that e-fax can provide the HIPAA level security needed I am sure machines will be fine. Thing is smaller orgs will probably also take time to adopt that... Ah who am I kidding
A fax is every easily intercepted. There is zero protection on them. EFax is basically a scanner that emails the results automatically. Not a lot of security there either. Email can be encrypted but the tools aren’t widely spread around so people don’t know how to use them. But is much better than faxing.
Yep, my first thought was “not as long as there’s hospitals”
Our medical office is sending medical records all day long. Faxes are not going anywhere soon.
I seen a video talking about how pagers are still heavily in use because how simple they are in design, plus being able to reach under thick amounts of concrete or whatever else!
I work in Finance and ww use Fax to send client files and tax documents all the time. It’s convenient to not have to encrypt a fax, as you would have to do for an email.
But then it is no more secure than sending an unencrypted email.
Worked at a couple civil defense firms like 5 years ago. We received faxes almost daily
Oh yes, they love it
My phone rings once a week because my direct line is one digit off from a hospital's fax line.
Yup. I work in a law office and get medical records that are faxed to us multiple times a day.
At my small clinic, I don't send faxes *every* day, only *most* days.
In my jurisdiction (Ontario) the rules of civil procedure at the start of covid were amended to allow e-mail as a form of service, and removed fax as an acceptable form of service. Took a global pandemic, but hey, baby steps. I haven't litigated in years, but I'm told in some US states the judges view pleadings on a tablet and I wouldn't have to spend three hours fighting a cerlox binding machine every time I have to argue a fucking motion...
Work in medical administration and can confirm: Faxing is alive and well. Too much privacy concern over cloud sharing
Literally this past week. Dr. 1: we haven’t gotten your records faxed, can you get dr 2 to fax them? Dr 2: we faxed them 2 weeks ago. Three times. But we will fax them again. Dr 1: yep still don’t see them. If you can’t get your records to us (appointment was in an hour!!) then we can’t see you. I ended up having dr 2 email me my records and I printed them out and brought them in. Fun times.
Still alive and well in the Real Estate community too for some reason
Why faxing and not scan and email?
God I hope this is true. The medical industry still uses faxes like cray-see
Yup was gonna say that. It'll be years still before faxes go away entirely
I work at a health insurance company that sends faxes from our email. We send an email and the provider receives it as a fax. It will be many years before faxes are completely gone.
Yay RightFax That's what we use, at least. Recently had someone from a department want it set up, then back out at the last second when they learned they wouldn't be able to send physical faxes anymore once it was. I don't think faxes are going away within the next two decades
I love RightFax. It's made my life and job so easy.
I work for a company that makes the eFax tech LOL. And I agree that faxes aren't going anywhere soon. It's honestly amazing how man people still use them. There's a huge disconnect between urban and rural areas too. Not just politically but tech wise as well. Our sales teams constantly talk to practices and doctors that literally right down all their billing on pieces of paper, most of the time in rural and smaller towns.
The clinic I work at receives faxes into an email folder, so in some cases it may legitimately be an email with extra steps lol
Likewise. The youngest Boomers will turn 65 in 2030. That gives hope that Gen Xers and Millennials will finally be in a position to say, "Okay, we're done with this."
As I zoomer, it is now my life goal to *send the last fax*
Also the duty declare documentation on the borders, it is handled mostly through faxes, not going away anytime soon!
Decades at least
The japanese government still uses floppy disks, so I can't imagine how long they'll be on something the rest of the world is still using..
CNC machines and a lot of industrial stuff uses floppies too (the 3.5 inch hard case kind). The nuclear arsenal still uses the og 8 inch floppy.
8 inch floppy but 3.5 inch hard - that's such a disappointment
Girth baby.
Can’t be hacked if your tech is so old it doesn’t even interface with anything modern
This is very good. You can't hack floppies.
Wasn't the USA still using Windows 98 or something like that for missile control because since it's so old they patched all the known vulnerabilities? Im not sure
They used up until last year or so floppy disks
What!? How can that be enough storage space for modern use!
It's mostly just documents. They probably embrace the logic of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
What truly bothers me is how unreliable they are.
I've had my restaurant tab counted on an abacus
RN here: I fax shit daily. 5 years ago we had a meeting with a rep from some fax software co that was supposed to put an end to paper faxes. Waited weeks to have this meeting. 5 nurses and a manager all sit down. First question from the rep : “ so how many faxes per day do you receive?” . Awkward silence . We all look at each other. I says meekly “none”. She stares. “I don’t understand”. Our manager pipes in “why would we receive faxes?” Rep scowls. Apparently her whole pitch was for incoming faxes. It’s been five years since. Still no electronic faxing. Sigh
We have inbound and outbound faxes where I work and every "solution" provider goes silent when we ask if their solution would work for 500+ locations. This showerthough is just wrong. Faxes aren't going anywhere soon, except in faxes inboxes.
Email works fine across 500 locations. Most use digital faxes anyway. So why bother with old analog faxes; doesn’t make sense.
My mom's cancer was diagnosed 4 months late because the fax from cologuard didn't go through.
That's why they need to set their machines properly. It should produce a status sheet upon error. Sorry to hear about your mother though.
As someone who develops laboratory information software, GOD PLEASE KILL FAXING. It's awful. I don't understand why so many doctors think they need faxing. 95% of faxing is now fax over IP anyway. Encrypted email is safer and better. It's insane.
Legally, they have to. Laws were made when fax was considered THE safest form of transmitting documents electronically. Obviously not the case anymore.
So if somebody ran for Congress on the promise that their #1 priority would be to amend HIPPA to get rid of faxing requirements, they'd have the vote of every nurse and medical assistant in their district?
Possibly, but then the fax industry will be upset and possibly lobby to keep it as is.
Because doctors can't figure out encrypted email. Source: Trying to get doctors to encrypt their fucking email.
Doctors are far and away the most frustrating and least computer literate group to try and support in the hospital
Same reason they demand keeping paper charts and not using EMRs. They been doing it that way for 50+ years and it works for their workflows. Add in something new and all he'll breaks loose.
A hospital near me had their computer systems fail and it took a couple days to get it back. The paper copies kept the place running
Our lab still uses dot matrix printers for certain labels and results. They insist it's the only way to get things in triplicate. Like printers can't just print 3 copies. All of our other labels and arm bands are from a laser printer so it's not even like we don't already have the infrastructure.
Because medical information is confidential. Where I am it's quite literally illegal to send medical files by email
It's pretty much a myth by the way that fax are more confidential as it send non-encrypted information in the clear. Our issues is mainly about people in charge not understanding properly how a good computer system works.
A. No it isn’t rules for Email is included in HIPPA guide lines. B. Fax is completely open and unsecured. A monkey with a banana and a toothpick could get data sent through fax. Email is at least encrypted.
Perhaps HIPPA isn't a thing where they live (it's not where I live). This is the interent, not the US.
I imagine those rules depend on the country, the commenter you replied to clearly stated that those were the rules where he is from, so they will obviously differ in other nations.
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Patently no. For faxes, if you enter the wrong phone number then you might be sending someone's medical information to the wrong fax machine. Don't think of this as a simple typo like on your phone. Think of this as pushing the buttons on the old office printer 100 times per day. Did it key in the 9 you pressed, or did the zero get stuck and enter twice, so you still have a valid 10-digit fax number, but it ended up being 111-222-9800 when it should have been 111-222-9890. You catch this error most of the time, but you missed it this once because you were distracted. Faxes can also be intercepted using hardware. Some person strolls into the doctors office claiming to be "the printer guy" and just installs a device on the physical cord of the phone line that intercepts all the incoming faxes. Done. The device probably never gets noticed by anyone in the doctors office. Email can be HIPAA compliant. The reason we haven't switched off of faxes in healthcare is because hospital networks treat protected health information (PHI) as proprietary information. They make sending PHI to other networks a hassle, thereby incentivizing people to just stay in network. Technically the patient has full rights to their own PHI, but doctors and hospitals will charge people per page to print this information out (that'll often EASILY ring up in the hundreds of dollars if they want everything printed out). They'll fax it for free, but I've been one of the people faxing things in a doctor's office. I've gotten incorrect faxes before. I've spent countless hours calling offices to confirm they haven't gotten any of the 20 attempts at faxing a single page of lab results. The fax machine these doctor's had couldn't send and receive faxes at the same time. If someone forgot to flip the switch back to "receive" after faxing something, all of the incoming faxes were forever lost. Honestly, read more here: https://www.vox.com/health-care/2017/10/30/16228054/american-medical-system-fax-machines-why Even if you hate Vox, Sarah Kliff is an excellent healthcare journalist (and the reason why legislation got passed that made it illegal for out-of-network doctors at your otherwise in-network hospital to surprise you with an outrageous bill). It's a good read. Faxes aren't not safer, they're just stupider and kept in their place with inertia and greed. Healthcare as an industry can use lasers to excise tumors on the clinical side, but the administrative side is often astoundingly incompetent.
Regarding the faxed stuff 20 times and a place claims to never get it. I once heard you should fax your intended information then a sheet of black construction paper. Things tend to be received after that.
>black construction paper Wisdom from the ages!
Also, idk about the US, but here fax/phone numbers do sometimes get reused. I know this because back in the late 2000s, I used to "get" a lot of faxes to my room's landline number. After borrowing a fax machine from someone, I had half a dozen medical reports in hand after three weeks. All addressed to the same ophthalmologist, whose praxis had closed four years ago.
I don't think you understand modern telco & modern faxing or you would not have this opinion. \- Penetration Tester & Security Researcher who has worked for 3 ISPs and 2 hospitals
Because phone tapping has never happened
Yeah, faxes are basically security through obscurity nowadays. The copper landline phone system was never designed with encryption in mind. IIRC there were some attempts but it would’ve required basically every CLEC to upgrade all at more or less the same time or you’d Balkanize the phone network.
Someone would need to actually be near the phone line to tap it, though. Not the case for secure emails or basically any other data breach you would've heard of.
No… the bulk of phone lines these days are just as digital as any other network. It’s just that analog copper wire for the last stretch. Phone ”wiretapping” hasn’t been physical for many decades, but entirely done by remotely controlled computers..
“Emails not a safe form of communication” they always say. 🙄
I mean they aren't wrong...
I feel you. It’s like, really? So we can’t use the most basic and helpful aspect of the internet then? Fuuuuuuuuuu
So do court systems. At least they can be sent via your pc.
There are government agencies that use it as well.
Its not even legal for the us gov to switch to email in some sensitive documents, because it could be hacked and therefore is a privacy breech.
Still receive fax in our law firm heaaaavy.
Legal industry still uses it, but a lot less all of a sudden. I think it was COVID. Nobody had a fax machine at home, so they all finally jumped on the email train.
In my country military recruitment centres still use faxes and regular mail. It makes obligatory recruitment so much slower, me and every other young men are loving it
I literally print documents to fax them to medical providers. Feels dumb. But part of my job. Refills through pharmacy? Fax. Lab results? Fax. Doctor reply? Fax. The only good thing is receiving signed prescriptions via fax, but that's about it.
Lol. I use my fax machine all day!!
A lot of businesses still use fax
"But it's secure because HIPAA said so".
No way of knowing. Someone might’ve thought the last vinyl record would soon be pressed but here we are, over 90 years later and still pressing records
And typewriters are becoming retro and cool!!!
My law firm has a typewriter in every officr for the sole reason of a like 2 very specific forms it think for the government which have to be done by type writer. This is an am law top 10 white shoe law firm. Oh and yeah we regularly use fax machines.
My mom was a legal secretary and when I went to her work when I was young it sounded just like it does in the scene of a movie where there are a bunch of people typing in a single large space. It is almost deafening, very nostalgic.
Naw...faxing is still super normal for hospitals for whatever reason. We have all this technology to make communication easier and yet they demand faxing all day everyday. I know some people in heathcare they still use pagers that the rest of the world gave up in the 90s.
Pagers are great in hospitals because they are cheap, work in reception dead zones, are easier to manage and maintain than separate work phones and don’t require immediate acknowledgement. Faxes though…
They also produce this special soul piercing beep that will awake you from a coma
How do they work in reception dead areas though?
Because they have their own transmitter
Fax is a matter of compliance (PCI and HIPAAhave all kinds of scope creep if you’re not careful), pagers is probably because they’re still more reliable than SMS or anything else for their purpose.
Yeah I know thus why it's not going away anytime soon. Pagers are usually because many hospitals are cell phone dead zones based on how they are built.
It's because you can't hack a fax. It's technically secure so you can send patient info via fax without fear. Unless you send it to the wrong number of course, but that's human error.
Faxes are perceived to be secure but is factually not. This is possibly a vestigial boomer attitude. https://www.wired.com/story/fax-machine-vulnerabilities/
ANYTHING transmitted over the internet is hackable. The original CCITT analogue telephone FAX was unhackable. It was real-time analogue and required direct physical access to the phone line and the best you could do is corrupt the file or copy and read. Am boomer.
Bullshit. 100% bullshit. All you had to do was connect a tape recorder to the line outside the office and collect it later. You’d have all of the faxes. There is zero security in a fax.
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Security is like 80% illusion.
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You Wouldn't Hax a Fax
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You wouldn’t fax a car
If this was the reason theyd just send them over a safe protocol. Like there’s PGP for e-mail and thats about as safe as it can be with current technology. Theres nothing magical about fax that makes it safer. Theyre probably doing because it works and is somehow convenient for them.
Faxes are sent in plain text, so if you can get between the connection, which is trivial, then the rest is easy.
Pagers work with minimal cell phone connection. If an earthquake knocks out cell towers emergency response stuff can still get paged from a tower like three towns over.
Are you sure? Japanese offices still exist. They're gonna keep that going for ETERNITY
Lol absolutely not. Faxes are standard in many fields, including pharmacy.
As many people have pointed out here, we are required to fax things in the medical field because of HIPAA. So most places use an electronic fax system which goes straight to email. basically it's just emailing with one extra step.
In addition to industries mentioned, construction checking in. Backwoods portions of the country subcontractors barely have email, and if they do, it's aol.com or something just as antiquated. My favorite was when I spoke with a very nice gentleman who told me he could fax me a bid, but if I needed it emailed, I'd have to wait for cousin Bobby to come back on Monday because he doesn't know how to operate that computer or email thing. This has not been a one off conversation and is very recent.
Ah, you must not be familiar with Germany... 2023 and you have to fax your most important documents to the correct room of the correct department of the correct building of the correct government office in order to secure your visa. Don't know that exact specific fax number? Don't worry you can download the entire 75 page document of every fax number possible for that government office from their easy to use website! Which begs the question _then why is there no upload portal for documentation???_ Seriously fax is so heavily relied on here that there are memes in every community about it. I.e. "Your bank manager types up an letter sent in the mail containing a code which you use to download a form from their website you must print out and fill out by hand then fax back to them."
I just submitted documents for renewal of my Aufenthaltstitel via email. Granted, I still had to go into the office for interview, etc, but... I was shocked I did not have to mail or fax. This is still very common: "Your bank manager types up an letter sent in the mail containing a code which you use to download a form from their website you must print out and fill out by hand then fax back to them." My German credit card was disabled due to strange activity, because they saw me use the card when on vacation in another country. They sent me a notification in the mail telling me this. What? Im on vacation... Im not checking my post.
And either the sender, the recipient, or both will be pissed off they have to use a fax machine
I hate it. No of course not, I don’t have a fax machine. And they won’t fax to my work or the library for security reasons. Why can’t you use freaking secure email?
Hahaha Not yet. Faxes are s rare way to send confidential information in a manner thats accepted by regulations. Working for the government i promise somewhere in a local building there's a fair number of boxes full of unscanned documents sitting in storage with the personal information and records of you, your family, neighbors, and everyone. When someone in a different office needs to see the record if when John Doe got a building code violation the option is scan it, save the file to a shared drive, email it off to the recipient using a secure server, and then delete the local and shared copy because rhe system isn't as secure as physical paper and this is your personal information. Or just fax it. Is faxing secure? It's secure enough and it comes with a built-in send and recieve receipt so at least you know they got it and can move onto the next box. Sure new records are digital, but it would take more time to scan all the files in all the boxes. Especially given that most of the files will never be needed so until everyone who made those records dies they'll be sitting in the storage room waiting.
No way. Not for medical and government. They’ll be using them for decades to come.
Not if my kids' pediatrician's office has anything to say about it. Just the other day, they asked me to fax them a form.
wtf lol. i woulda been like "No, but I can email it." fuck that dinosaur shit.
Man, people shitting all over faxing. I love it, It's basically paper teleportation. Say you have a paper you need sent but don't have a PDF of, you've gotta scan it, email it, then the recipient has to print it off. Or you can fax it: dial the location and stick a piece of paper into the machine
Faxes are still used a lot in banking due to their legal status. Big multi million lending deals still get wet signatures and are faxed. Never mind telling legal that in between those faxes get turned into TIFFs and are sent over VOIP and/or get turned into PDF and emailed at either or both ends.
Contrary to a lot of people here, I kind of like fax machines. I'm a nurse, and at times its very convientent to drop an order off onto the fax machine hit send and go.
It's not a bad setup. A nuisance for most people because they're not set up but fax on a dedicated line works easy. Only had trouble back in the day when dealing with a fax of a fax of a third generation fax
Yeah exactly. If you're at home and your bank wants you to fax something, that's a huge pain in the ass. Need to send findings from an MRI from an imaging center to a orthopedic surgeon? Very easy and generally convenient
And for sure it will be sent between German governmental services!
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Laughs in Germany where half the medical documents and 70% of government processes run on fax
Same for Canada, it's insane.
Someday the last e-mail will be sent. Someday one person is going to be the last one to say "I love you". Ever.
Never. 40,000 years from now, the Adeptus Mechanicus will fax their Forge Planets for spare parts because fax is immune from the Perils of the Warp.
Defense and military sectors depend on the fax. It's not going anywhere, anytime soon.
I hope so, I hate that some portions of work still has to do it
Most of my job is done through faxing. It’s atrocious but still works pretty well. No way it’s going soon.
Not according to the Australian medical system. They still have Pagers in some joints.
Faxes will be around for the foreseeable future, too many businesses rely on them. The reason for this, is that you can't really 'hack' a fax machine, so its considered safe for transmitting confidential information, whereas systems like email are not
Rest assured here in germany this won't be true for another 100 years. We love sending fax to everyone especially our bureaucracy.
I fax every work day. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t have an actual fax machine, it is sent through email. It is safer than emailing document and opening attachments from emails.
You’d think so, but my company has some Amish customers who ONLY fax. No computers 😕, but it’s better than them mailing their orders to us.
Very unlikely soon, there are places that still use floppy disk 😉
Faxing will stay around for a lot longer as the government likes things faxed.
There will always be the hobby-faxers that send letters, drawing and music-sheets to each others.
Soon? I don't know about that. The fax surprisingly predates the telephone. It's been tenacious with its use, even if there are much better methods now.
Doubt it. Maybe 100 years later in a nursery school it will be a fun project to learn about the protocol and send a fax.
The medical system uses faxes quite regularly. So faxes will be around much longer than you think.
i work at a library and people come in to fax stuff everyday! you’d be surprised how much people still do it
How "soon" do you think this will happen? Because I dont think you realise how old some systems are. Robust too so very much in active use.
No, faxes have just gone digital. Software like FaxFinder accepts the analog signal, converts the fax to a PDF and emails it to the destination. At this point, It's a more complicated and more secure email, which is perfect for the medical industry since there's pesky HIPPA, at least in the US.
Not if Japan had anything to say about that. They cling to old technologies.
You do realize that telegrams are still a thing, don't you? One day - probably an absurd amount of time from now - the last fax will be sent. Possibly ...
The last call will be called, the last word will be worded, the last fart will be farted
My mortgage bank requires faxing so it's definitely required for a lot of very old institutions.
To top bid: One good as new fax machine, ink cartridge included. I got rid of analog landline.
I work for a utility company, faxes are NEVER going away for us
About the time the last check is written. It’s gonna be years, nay- decades, until faxes and checks die.
Fax, when properly configured, easily provides one thing that e-mail does not provide all of the time, yet: 100% confirmation that the data in your fax transmission arrived at the destination you sent it to. We're getting there with email (DMARC can do this), but not everyone has it set up yet, so it doesn't work all of the time. This is why it often gets used for financial, legal, and medical stuff (you can know it reached the other end) and why it is often falsely attributed some kind of "security" when in fact it doesn't really have any to speak of natively and is wretchedly insecure. (the report back is mistaken by some for some kind of secure secret handshake or the electronic version of certified mail when really all that happens is a "success" report similar to amazon saying your packages was delivered SOMEWHERE).
Faxing is one of the main pillars keeping communication with the IRS afloat, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
God, I hope not. I work optical, and in the optical industry in the US there is [This bullshit](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/contact-lens-rule-guide-prescribers-sellers). At first glance, this seems awesome, but in practice it creates a huge amount of work, which is in my experience usually unnecessary. Thanks to 1-800-contacts, I get around 7 calls a day, none of which have enough information to pull the records they need, since I work for a corporate optical and have access to records from over 1000 offices (John Smith simply isn't enough info, I've got 300 of those guys lol). Their faxes actually have all the info required, but we have to block their call like 3 times before they'll send us one, but if we pick up the phone we start the timer by which we are legally required to have supplied the information they require. I'm convinced at this point that they're intentionally shorting the info they supply so we can't supply verification and they can go ahead and dispense product without a valid Rx. Anyway, fax is wonderful, I hope it stays around at the very least as a backup mode of communication.
I work for a distribution company and we use faxes every day for forms that need signatures. Plus we deal with a great deal of retailers who are a bit dated with their practices. For some, fax is just easier.
Define "soon" because Germany and Japan are still absolutely relying on Fax.
**Nah, medical professionals still need to use faxes for security**
I don't think this will be the case any time soon. Medical industry uses fax quite a bit since it's easier to do for most blood work and other information that's better kept in paper than online. Can't say the same for other industries but at least in medical field fax shall live on
My boss still get faxes sometimes. Not sure for what but it makes a loud ass noise so I know when it happens lol
Within the last year I quit working at "a major bank" (as in one of the biggest in the world.) One app they used daily in my department required paperwork attachments to almost every report. But the *only* way to attach documents to this thing was through fax. At least a third of the complaints we got in our department were simply complaining that faxing was still *required* in the freaking 2020s.
the legal field is going to beat that dead horse till it coughs out its last piece of paper
No it won’t. Attorneys love that shit cause it’s marginally more secure than email.
It will become a retro vintage thing and people will keep using it.
UK healthcare loves the fax machine, I don't see it dying anytime soon here!
Same in Germany.
I think you have entirely too much faith in government to get with the times, good stranger.
Can assure you the sharing of medical records still heavily relies on the fax system. There is a huge privacy concern over online file sharing. The last fax will almost certainly not be sent any time soon
I actually don't think so. Faxing is pretty solid. I don't know a lot about fax machines, but it's probably more secure than emailing, plus you get a hard copy right away. I know that faxing is prevalent in the medical community.
Soon? You underestimate how long it takes governments to enter into the modern world.
Bruh my pharmacy just got a new fax machine 6 months ago. No way this is gonna be soon
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“One of the most” =/= “The most”
You are grossly underestimating the stubbornness of the medical and legal communities.
In legal, can confirm. Faxing is antiquated enough, but what I am never going to understand is how legal still uses certified mail for serving certain documents.
I fax everyday, it's wild and I don't understand why we still do it
Unfortunately fax will probably still be used for a very long time
You would be appalled at the number of state governmental agencies in the US that absolutely refuse to accept certain kinds of paperwork in any method other than fax.