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fax.com Finally Fined $5M For Fax Spam
originalhack writes "If you are tired of getting calls in the middle of the night with nothing but a fax calling tone, you will celebrate this. Fax.com, who is well known for wardialing in their search for fax machines and for sending junk faxes, has finally actually been fined. The long arm of the law often moves slowly, here is the order. If you don't want to wait for the feds to stop your favorite junk faxer, you can try your luck in small claims. Federal law passed in 1991 (known as the TCPA) makes it illegal to send any material transmitted via facsimile that advertises the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission. If the fax was deliberately sent to you (as most junk faxes are), Federal law entitles you to recover a minimum of $500 and, depending the judge's discretion, up to $1,500 for each such fax that you receive. More info at junkfax.org."
If you're in the UK and receive junk sales faxes, then you can block 99.9% of them by registering with the Fax Preference Services at www.fpsonline.org.uk.
After 1 May 1999 it became illegal to send faxes to individuals without prior consent, and businesses have the right to 'opt-out', which is what this list manages. I used to get dozens of junk faxes a week, after registering in August 2001 I have had no more than 2 or 3, so it definately works - although it takes 3-4 weeks for the block to become active.
Obviously, as it's a marketing industry-run scheme (which they had to do to prevent government-enforced action), they don't go out of their way to advertise this list, but it does work.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
The Commission also stated that Fax.com's "primary business itself constitutes a massive on-going violation" of the law, and that Fax.com's citation responses, as well as publicly available information contained on its website, suggested that Fax.com apparently intentionally and willfully violated the Act and our rules and orders....As a result, the Commission determined that Fax.com was apparently liable for a proposed forfeiture of $5,379,000, the statutory maximum.
So they've been slow, but thank goodness they haven't minced their words or pulled their (legal) punches.
Now if only we could move onto email spammers who, without a doubt, cause much more nuisance, grief, and cost to network maintainers (and ultimately us).
For a very simple reason - many businesses don't have internet email, but almost everybody has faxes. The pharmacy that I am the frontshop manager at does not have internet access at all, just it's own intranet. We simply cannot get email. (Head office people, of course, get whatever they want, including net access.)
Faxes are a huge part of our business - prescriptions are legal documents, we can only accept originals or copies faxed directly from doctor's offices (and for some drugs, even those are not allowed). Many doctor's offices also refuse to business by phone at all, but strictly by fax, simply so they, like us, can keep paper trails for everything. Without signatures or copies of signatures, we'd be up sh*t creek in case anything were to go wrong.
And no, *gp-signed email is not an answer. As a pharmacy, we are regulated by various provincial and federal agencies. They don't recognize a lot of stuff without hardcopy in the form of originals or faxes.