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?"

Comments

illegal--phone company/FCC remedy

[rmm4pi8]

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!

Bad advice but...

[RALE007]

the one bad turn deserves another "jerk" part of me insists I say:

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....