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How to Stop Rampant Junk Fax? 38

Posted by Cliff from the technological-solutions-to-social-problems dept.
Fascist Christ asks: "The company I work for, like many other companies, uses a fax machine. We get an annoying ammount of advertisements by fax and are looking to find an effective way to stop it. We have tried requesting to be removed from the lists, but we get too many to do this every time. One company told me that they get there info from infoUSA. Does anyone have any experience with this or other companies and know how to stop this activity without getting a lawyer involved?" How difficult would it be to set up a fax system that would use caller-ID blacklists before answering the line? At the very least you can block identifiable spammers by something that's harder to change than their email address: their phone number.
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How to Stop Rampant Junk Fax? More

How to Stop Rampant Junk Fax?

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  • Computer (Score:4, Informative)

    by norwoodites ( 226775 ) <pinskia AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 11, 2002 @10:08PM (#4242080) Journal
    Use a computer based fax machine. Then only print out the ones you want to print out.

  • $500 fines, work real good!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by GOD_ALMIGHTY ( 17678 ) <curt.johnson@gmail.NETBSDcom minus bsd> on Wednesday September 11, 2002 @10:15PM (#4242154) Homepage
    That's right, if your in the good ol USA, you get $500 per each violation in civil penalities after the FCC gets it's fine. Junkbusters.org has info on this and links to the complaint pages and contact info at the FCC.

    eFax.com Just got fined $24Million for doing this. It was on /. last month.
    Do a search in the article archive next time before wasting time posting.
    • Actually I think that was fax.com not efax.com.

      fax.com is in the sole business of junk faxing.

    • It is highly illegal in the U.S. to send junk fax, so $500 dollar fines should work quite nicely to stop it.

      It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States - ... to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine; or ...

      United States Code [gpo.gov], Ttitle 47 , Chapter 5 , Subchapter II , Part I , Sec. 227.

      If you are clever you should also be able work out a good set of claims against solitications to your cell phone using that section of the USC, too.

      Reading the letter of the code, it should also apply to spam, but lawyers seemed to have dropped the ball on that one.


  • Change your number.

    Tell the people you want to fax you. Change your ads etc.
    • This doesn't really work. An adept fax-spammer is probably going to be wardialing for fax machine connections, so it would only be a (short) matter of time before the problem started again.

      Plus, a lot of companies like to be able to publically publish their fax numbers...
    • Yeah, and wait 2 months until your number is found again (yes, junk faxers war-dial, which is also illegal.)

      - A.P.

  • Free tools to do the trick (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Set up Hylafax. [hylafax.org] to retrive your faxes and notify you by email when they come int.

    By default fax programs use tiff files which are not very web friendly. Most people prefer pdfs which is why the fax2pdf [sourceforge.net] project exists.

    With a little bit of effort you can set up a machine that retrieves all your faxes and delivers them by email. You print only the ones you want, delete, or archive the rest.

  • the best way to get back at them if they wont take you off the lists, is to kill their toner. All you need to do is take a couple black pages, and tape them together. Let it run through the scan, and have the paper recycle itself through as much as you want. Their fax (if its not a putter), will be out of toner in no time..

    • I doubt any proper junk faxer has a fax machine hooked up - it's almost always a computer doing the sending.
    • Probs:
      1) YOU can then be busted for going vigilante. If I remember, this is kept under a different category than junk faxing, but is a malicious act on your part. The phone company gets in on it, as it falls more under the "threatening phone call", etc. thing. I think they threaten to cut off your phone, too.
      2) No guarantee you're faxing the right person. If they aren't requesting a response via fax, then you're really guessing at their fax number.
      3) As noted by others, they probably don't have a real fax machine.

      Best solution (as noted, also) is to sic the law on them. A few people have actually collected those fines, too!

  • Lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    Why are you lawyer-adverse? If you needed a computer system installed, would you eschew those dirty, stinking computer engineers?

    Just because they have a reputation for being lying, theiving, conniving lowlifes, lawyers actually do perform a real function. It seems that if you've got a problem with harrassment, it makes sense to seek the advice of a lawyer.
  • If you live in California, you can write a letter to Gov. Davis urging him to sign AB2944 [ca.gov], as suggested in this recent editorial [sfgate.com] in the San Francisco Chronicle.

    If you're not in California, well, you can still write to your local politicians.

    • If your trying to avoid getting laywers invloved do you really want to go getting policians invloved??

      Orthanc
    • The only way to move Governor Davis to action is with a bribe^H contribution. His signature probably costs a bit more than a toner cartridge, but not much. Check out egray.org [egray.org] to see what the going rate is.

      Most junk faxers are small businesses who contract through a faxing service. The faxing service uses special fax servers to send, so the old black construction paper trick won't help. At best you tie up a channel on their PRI.

      Others have mentioned that you can use various laws, including the TCPA to go after the small businesses. You may also try contacting the major mass-fax houses. Ask to be added to any dontfax list they have. From what I recall the TCPA does not require the mass fax houses themselves maintain a list. You may try to get around this by asking to be added to the dont send list of all their clients. At the very least it would be a headache for them and some documentation if you ever wanted to sue. It's a longshot, but you never know.

  • As others have mentioned, in the US there is a law against this and you'll probably need to get your company's lawyers involved.

    There are a couple of resources for you and your lawyers to get started with. junkfax.org [junkfax.org] and http://www.junkfaxes.org [junkfaxes.org] are two separate websites dedicated to the cause, the second has an excellent mailing list where you'll find advice and experience on going after junkfaxers with the TCPA law.

  • I broke up with my girlfriend last week, but she keeps calling me anyway. I told her to stop, but now she's showing up at my doorstep and ringing my doorbell every hour. I tried asking her to stop, but she says she loves me and doesn't want to lose me. Does anyone have any experience with this problem and know how to stop this activity without getting a lawyer involved?
  • You just need two things:

    1) A really big black TIFF file
    2) A little creativity >:)
  • You can either get a decent phone or phone system that blocks numbers. At least a few multi-line phones (not phone systems... I am talking about 2-4 line phones you can get from Staples or other better/decent office supply stores) can block incoming numbers. Often (like mine) they have a fax port on the back, so a line can be used for voice and fax, or just fax. Either way, the phone blocks the incoming call by the defined number.

    - Rob

  • That's often all it takes, just politely informing them that they are liable for a $500 fine for every unsolicited fax they send you. Most of the time a lawyer will not be needed. If you are in California any civil suit for under $5000 would go to small claims court, where lawyers aren't even allowed, and if one party doesn't show up they automatically lose. That's one of my Dad's favorite things to remind greedy corporations who try to screw him of (the most recent victim was Earthlink). He's probably the most effective person I know in such situations.

    Notice that there are no lawyers involved in any of the above steps. The law is involved, however, which is why it's effective. And, if your fax-spammers refuse to stop you can make some easy money on the side, again with no lawyers involved (in CA, anyway).

  • ...to sign up to the Faxing Preference Service [fpsonline.org.uk]. Once you have done this, you appear on the list of people it is unlawful for anyone to fax-spam.

    If you're concerned about the amount of tree-ware spamming you through your letterbox then sign up for the Mailing Preference service while you're at it.

    Finally, you can also sign up to the Telephone Preference service and foil those legalised war-diallers that phone you up and then hang up on you when they realise they can't connect you to a sales drone.
    • I've literaly just done this 5 minutes ago and it's very easy: name, address, fax number and you're on. It takes 28 days for it to come into effect.

      I did this six months ago for another number and it's working very well - overnight we went from about 5 junk faxes a day to zero. We've had about two since then.

  • ... 'cause I know Verizon can add a list of accepted phone numbers to any line at a low cost (like 5-10$ a month I think?). Apparently, someone who calls who's not on the list can leave their name, and then you can check through the list of names rejected and okay or reject people permanently. Just tell whomever's faxing you to call first, because you've installed a new system.

    I'd bet other providers offer the same.

  • If there is a law against Junk Faxing, why are we having such a hard time getting equivilent laws against Junk Mailing....same thing in my mind.

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