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Fax-Spam -- What Can One Do?
phoneAlone asks: "Recently a friend has moved into a new home, where his phone number was previously used as a fax-line and receives a frequent amount of faxes all hours of the day and night. Attempts to contact the senders of this "fax-spam" and be removed from these lists are unsuccessful. What is your experience with fax-spams? What actions (legal or otherwise) can be used to combat this?"
At the risk of suggesting something fairly dramatic, the individual in question may have to resort to changing their phone number (which may be disastrous for a business, or merely an extreme annoyance for a home). First, some other possibilities:
1. Depending on the country, and phone company that we're dealing with, it may be possible to get the phone number(s) of the caller(s), and, while not blocking them, try to contact them. This could still be legit, despite first appearances.
2. Try changing phone company (if 1 doesn't work). Or, at least, ask different companies about the possibility of blocking certain phone numbers.
3. Finally, change phone number. This will certainly be extremely annoying for your friend, especially if they are running a business from home.
If you are able to work out who this fax-spammer _is_, you may be able to sue for stalking or some similar crime. Unfortuantely, the options would vary from country-to-country, and possibly state-to-state.
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
Changing the number is obvious, but how about receiving faxes to a computer software? That way, paper is not wasted for one.
And if the new location has phone lines too, try switching the fax and phone lines. You'll get plenty of beeping calls, but they should disappear as their sends will be unsuccessful.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Tell them your situation (any half-assed phone co. would have records on hand to find the culprit number), tell them to block said number.
If faxes persist, send the phone company a letter with a hefty dose of legalese, reminding them of the fact they are charging you for something you have already told them to stop. Companies tend to take people more seriously when they show resolve and are seemingly willing to settle the situation in court.
At this point, the phone company is pissed and will turn it's efforts towards the culprit. Worked for me, should definately work for you.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
fax spam is illegal under the federal telecommunications statutes, with severe penalties, even to working fax numbers. the phone company is able to trace these numbers, so request a trace from them after explaining what is happening, if they refuse to provide it or after you have the number, contact the FCC or send a demand letter indicating you will be contacting the FCC.
this happened to my parents; the above remedy does in fact work. best of luck!
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1.) Acquire a fax machine.
2.) Connect to above mentioned abused phone line.
3.) Print three sheets of paper that contain the message in large obnoxious print:
Stop Faxing Me At 555-(myphonenumberhere)!
(or whatever you'd like to say)
4.) Tape the top of sheet two to the bottom of sheet one, tape the top of sheet three to the bottom of sheet two. (this order may have to be inverted depending on how your fax machine feeds and scan pages (bottom to top, top to bottom) etc. Figure out the proper order to do step 5 correctly.)
5.) Feed sheet one into your recently borrowed/acquired fax machine on the phone line. Dial and transmit to the offending non responsive party.
6.) Once page one has transmitted, and the machine is working on page two, tape the bottom of page three to the top of page one so your transmitting fax machine has a nice three page loop of your message.
7.) Leave fax machine and go to bed. By morning the offensive party will have dozens of copies of your message (as many as the number of sheets their fax paper tray contained), hopefully making enough of an impression upon them that fax spam truly is annoying, and they just might consider ceasing to do it to you.
All in all, it's an old trick and I by no means take credit for it. It's a very immature act, and pretty much a bad idea. You would be just as guilty of harassment as the offending party. However, if all else fails....
Beware blue cats moving at
The first result was junkfaxes.org. Another site is starting a class action lawsuit againt fax.com, one of the most previlant junk faxers. Fax.com also happens to be the scumbags faxing my line at least once a day, even when I shut off the fax machine.
The bottom line is you can't do it alone. The only way to get any results is to join a class action suit, or get the FCC involved. They will either fabricate evidence to stall and/or increase you legal expenses, or if you do win, they will just refuse to pay. I have no time right now to bother with this crap, so I just save all the faxes and hope I'll get a few bucks when the class action suit goes through.
These days, the best this trick will accomplish is to tie up one of the fax spammer's lines for a few seconds, and that's if anything is even set to answer on ring. Most bulk faxing nowadays
..." followed by a number overseas, which they know damned well nobody is going to pay to call. Typical spammer tactics. I've even received faxes asking me to send a fax saying "Yes" or "No" to some 1-900 number to vote on something or another. Sadly I imagine they probably made a killing from bored office assistant types "voting" on their company's dime.
a) is done with computers, not with fax machines, thus there is no paper/toner on the spammer's end to waste
b) is done by someone with enough lines that tying one up won't affect them
Bulk faxes typically come from places who have set up an operation to perform that specific task and then contract their services out to all takers. It's similar to telemarketing, in that someone sets up a fax center (search "broadcast fax" and look for the shady ones) full of computers, modems, and phone lines. Then $COMPANY_A pays the fax center to blast their ad to a certain number of recipients. When you get a fax hawking $PRODUCT_X, it didn't come from the people who are selling that product, they paid someone else to send it.
In the case of most fax spam I've received, very few of them provide a fax number as a point of communication anyway, so figuring out where to try a fax bomb can be time-consuming. The contact point in the majority of my fax spam is generally a URL. (If you've gotten any fax spam, I presume you've gotten the one from some scam operation[s] claiming they'll design your company's website for free, to "gain valuable experience" and/or "train their students," if you agree to pay for a year's worth of webhosting services at some exorbitant price...)
Every now and then, I'll get one that says "To stop receiving these faxes, send a fax with your phone number to
Oddly enough, even though fax spam has a higher monetary cost than email spam, I tend to Just Hit Delete on the faxes, even though I report a lot of the email spam I get.
An interesting aside: a colleague of mine has a 1-800 number for her fax machine, and never advertises whatever the local ringthrough number is, she only promotes the toll-free number. She has never received a single fax spam. Her theory - and a very interesting one - is that, because owners of toll-free numbers receive bills containing a list of every number who has called them, fax spammers avoid them for fear of being "found."
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A picture of the goatse.cx guy with the caption "This will be you if you don't stop faxing me"