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."

Comments

Finally something for the treehuggers to celebrate

[Space cowboy]

... but now they'll all turn to online spam instead of the dead-tree variety :-(

Simon.

If you're in the UK and get junk faxes

[jolyonr]

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

Re:If you're in the UK and get junk faxes

[mr i want to go home]

The problem with fax.com is regardless of their own self imposed opt-out scheme, their whole business was/is against the law. This slight problem didn't stop fax.com from running their business, nor did the prior warnings from the FCC. Companies like this are always willing to overstep their marks, or 'forget' their boundaries.

It's because of this that self governed schemes always make me nervous - you never really know if they've put an expiry on the block, and will just try again to see if you're still on the same number, or just keep spamming you until they receive an 'official' warning from the governing body.

I personally find most forms of unsolicited promotion really annoying - especially people hawking on the streets! - and think all forms should all be banned by legislation. There is absolutely no reason why any form of spamming should be tolerated by society and our governments.

Maybe we need a email - FAX service ...

[openmtl]

1) Build an email -> FAX gateway with catchall domain.

2) Put semantically overloaded email addresses into OPT-OUT/Cancel/Remove links on various web sites.

3) Wait for FAXES to print out.

4) Start legal procedings in small claims.

5) ...

6) Profit.

Re:Maybe we need a email - FAX service ...

[AndroidCat]

actual faxes always have the senders number

Really? Why faxes compared to any other phone call with caller id blocked? (The phone number on the fax itself is generated by software. Trivial to remove or change.)

Re:Maybe we need a email - FAX service ...

[phr1]

It's apparently illegal to not put an accurate originating number on the fax itself. Not that junk faxers are bothered by that in the slightest, since junk faxing itself is illegal.

Re:Maybe we need a email - FAX service ...

[swb]

Really? Why faxes compared to any other phone call with caller id blocked?

Our dialup networking PRI at work always reports a calling party number for inbound calls. In some instances its bogus as it represents an outbound trunk number or some other number you might not immediately associate with the calling party. However, there's a number associated with every incoming call on the PRI, so, depending on what kind of incoming line you have you may get a number whether the calling party tries to hide it or not.

And then there's the phone company, who, if sufficiently motivated, will provide that information for you. I think that even caller-ID masked (ie, anonymous) calls are only anonymous when the phone switch that terminates them to the recipient masks the calling party number. The calling party number is available and tracable by the phone company, I'm guessing its a necessity of operating a phone network.

Where it would get tricky, though, is if the phone lines were paid for by company X, who leased space to company Y, who leased computers and modems to company Z, who did work for company A, and you can never get your hands on the people doing the actual naughty deeds.

Re:Maybe we need a email - FAX service ...

[JohnnyComeLately]

I was a telecom engineer for about 6 years, so I can shed some light on the CallerID statement you made.

First, the person who stated the number in the header of a fax is software driven is mostly correct. There may be newer faxes that use CallerID, but each and every fax machine I have used or seen to date sends it's own number with the fax (which is then inserted in the header).

Ever since people figured out how to cheat pay phones by phreaking and sending tones (by whistling, or use black boxes held up to the phone mic), phone switches use out of band signaling (SS7) to route calls. This means that before your call is actually placed, all the phone switches in the path from the source to destination coordinate the call (based on call translation tables, options in the switches, etc). This way a circuit is not wasted if the call can not get through. So often, when you hear a "ringing" sound, it's a "comfort tone" sent while the circuit is being established (this way you aren't left wondering, due to the "dead air", or lack of any sound).

I digressed a little. Part of the SS7 messaging that is sent back and forth included. among other things, the source of the phone call. Your caller ID block is a software feature in your local telephone company (telco) swithing office. It's illegal, but if you work for a phone company you can override and see all CallerID info, regardless if the caller has it set to "blocked".

All bets are off if you receive your calls via a PBX. Most PBXs are configured incorrectly (at some level) and can display anything from the local trunk (from the telco) for the incoming call to the actual phone number (assuming it's not blocked). But again, the PBX receives the phone number from the local telco switch that provides local service (or incoming long distance). How the info is treated in a PBX is a function of its configuration.

HTH,
John

If only....

[nighty5]

we can apply the same fine structure for every junk email was receive......

Quote of the day

[tuxette]

From the ruling, #14:

We have no doubt that the TCPA provides more than such reasonable clarity and precision for persons of common intelligence.

It was appaling to read about fax.com's arrogance while reading through the ruling, though it really shouldn't surprise me. It's nice to see the law working.

Re:Quote of the day

[Karl Prince]

From http://www.fax.com

Our latest success story,... On July 26, 2002...

Looks like it been a bit lean for them recently

From http://www.fax.com/Company_profile/our_business.as p

Fax.com has identified over 30 million untouched fax numbers

What ever that means (aside from how they may have accidentally found them)

That fast!

[-Maurice66-]

So this fax bit is covered now... however:

What are they doing about Telex spam? When are they going to fine telex spam?

M

Ounce of prevention...

[drpickett]

Ya know, if fax.com had just taken the time to buy out the senators and representatives from their region, they probably would have avoided this whole mess, and they probably could have gotten away with less capital outlay - This model has been shown to work with other high profile companies

Re:Ounce of prevention...

[Anonymous Coward]

They offered them tonnes of money--but they sent the offer by fax.

PDF version of the order

[anonymous coword]

The fcc order was publsihed in Micro$oft .doc format. So I have converted it to PDF with OpenOffice.org's one click PDF technology.

Read it here

Re:Finally something for the treehuggers to celebr

[AndroidCat]

I wonder.. It would be very surprising that they haven't tried spam already, either directly or through an "affiliate".

After all, the immorality or varying amounts of illegality of spam wouldn't slow them down compared to war-dialing for fax in the middle of the night.

Wait a sec...

[graveyardduckx]

You mean all of those modem handshakes after I got a cable modem were real? I thought I was just having nightmares about my old 2400... nooooooo

"We will not rest" !?

[Gary Whittles]

FCC's chairman Michael K. Powell issued the following statement:

"We will not rest until consumers find peace from unwanted and unlawful intrusions - whether from telemarketing calls or junk faxes."

Uhm... wow, all hail Michael, here to save us from junk-faxes. Is this guy for real? Is he running for office, and/or trying to cover up the fact that they really can't do much about junk mail?

Re:Yet again,

[AndroidCat]

The governement was already interfering in the gun, rope and tar'n'feather industries by preventing people from doing what needed doing.

(I can't figure out if your post has a hidden smiley. Can you figure out if mine has one?)

Re:Yet again,

[EmagGeek]

Don't let this troll get to you. Our great nation was founded on the rule of law, and the TCPA was passed by people who were elected by The People. The whole purpose of The Government is to represent The People, and The People have spoken. The People do not want to receive Junk Faxes, and The People have the right to tell businesses so, and businesses must abide by those wishes. The whole reason the TCPA was enacted was because businesses ignored the Will of The People for too long, so The People invoked their sovreign rights given by The Constitution to compel business to listen.

Anyone who actually WANTS to receive junk faxes may certainly do so, and there's nothing stopping fax.com from sending faxes to those people. The People are not putting anyone out of business here, they are simply compelling a business to play by the rules.

"Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?!" --Walter Sobchak

Why do Fax machines still exist

[ahecht]

This brings up the question of why Fax machines are still used anymore. Any slightly experienced computer user can easily send a color JPEG scan of a document via email in about the same time it would take to send a fax. For the technophobes, why isn't there some type of terminal that emulates faxing though email? It could either connect to an office ethernet or dial into an ISP at 56k, and send a scanned document as a color JPEG to any email address (which would probably be faster than traditional faxes, which send uncompressed TIFFs at 14.4kbps). If the recipient doesn't have a computer, the machine could function as a email to paper gateway, collecting and printing from a cheap POP3 email account. Am I missing something? Does old-fashoned faxing have a place in the modern society?

Re:Why do Fax machines still exist

[velo_mike]

IIRC, this was discussed on /. a couple weeks ago (I'm too lazy to look it up) but the main points were

• simplicity (even the most brain dead induhvidual can send a fax)
• legal weight (I think US Courts recognize faxes as legal documents)
• FCC minimum service standards of 1200 baud(2 years ago there were places in Colorado, ~30 miles from denver which couldn't get dial up but could send and recieve faxes)

Re:Why do Fax machines still exist

[Steve Franklin]

Because it's cheaper to have one main office fax machine than to give everyone with a computer a scanner.

Re:Why do Fax machines still exist

[Ciggy]

Am I missing something? Does old-fashoned faxing have a place in the modern society?

Yes, because it puts much more of the burden of the cost of the fax on the sender: they may use up your consummables (unless you have a fax-modem attached to a computer which receives and displays faxes digitally [and a large HD]), but they also [generally] have to pay to phone you. Unlike email whereby the junk mailers use other people's machines without their permission.

Plus, with dialer identification at the recipient's end, they could block any fax that doesn't identify the sender's phone number (assuming facility existed in the hardware/software) - to forge this would require cracking the phone company's computers.

Faxing is like a peer-to-peer network: you connect directly to the recipient for the delivery (as it leaves your machine, it arrives at their's) and they know who you are, unlike email in which you dump the whole message to the courier and can [fairly] easily forge the origins of it.

Re:Why do Fax machines still exist

[richkh]

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.

Re:Why do Fax machines still exist

[gclef]

Think about what you're proposing here...you're proposing replacing a system that has only one device at each end (the fax machine), with a system that has, what, 4? 6? a dozen? machines in the chain between sender and reciever. That's orders of magnitude more likely to fail, which makes it a bad replacement.

Re:Yet again,

[SirFozzie]

If I had mod points, you would be a smoking crater.

Part of the free market is that the advertiser pays for the advertising. Faxing shifts the cost of the advertising to the recipient (in paper and ink).

If somebody agrees to receive this stuff, then there's no problem with it. That's a private contract between two parties.

Using your example, we shouldn't go after muggers because after all, they are part of the economy (redistribution of wealth, and hell, it'd create bodyguard jobs for wealthy people).

Tell you what.. I can visit your house in the middle of the night, and spray paint an advertisement for a local resturaunt on your window.. that is what junk faxers and spammers are doing. Using your property for their aggrandizement.

Get a clue.

Words couldn't be clearer

[mr i want to go home]

From the FCC Order of Forfeiture:

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).

Re:Words couldn't be clearer

[mr i want to go home]

Eh, replying to my own post, sorry.

Here's another little snippet from the FCC's Order:

Section 227(b)(1)(C) of the Act prohibits any person from using "a telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine."

It's interesting that the act doesn't allow you to send unsolicited ads from a computer to a fax machine, but doesn't go as far as prohibiting sending them from a computer to a computer (even if it was receiving faxes).

It seems like this act could have been used to kill off email spam long ago, if only it was worded slightly differently. What a pity.

Where are my junk faxes from?

[phr1]

I have a pile of junk faxes left over from before I gave up and switched my fax machine off auto-answer. They are the usual kind, toner cartridges, vacation specials, and so on. Is there any simple way to tell if they came from fax.com? I'll be happy to send them to some plaintiff somewhere if it will get more money out of the junk faxers. Getting some of that money myself as a side effect would be nice but is not necessary.

Re:If you're in the UK and get junk faxes / Postal

[kbsingh]

There is a similar service called the MPS that you can register with to block third part Postal Mailings.

As with the FPS the MPS is also a Third Party only legal requirement. If you have given your details to someone, they have the right to continue to send you material by Fax and Post, just they cant rent it out to anyone else.

There is a legal requirement for all list owners (! there is such a professional title !) to clean their data against the MPS and FPS. If your name is on the list, and you get something in the post / fax, you can claim compensation!

If you look on the website http://www.dmaconsumers.org/ [ dmsconsumers.org ] - there is an email Pref Service ( E-MPS ) there as well. The last time I went into this issue to any great detail, they were looking to see if they can make it a legal requirement along the lines of the MPS for third party email data rental work.

All this, as Jolyon, has already said - to keep the Direct Marketing Industry in the clear from Govt Action.

my usual reply to unwanted faxes ...

[selderrr]

was sent form my computer (so it took me 3 secs to send it) and had this default message (translated from dutch) :

Hi there, I just received a fax from you and wish to inform you that I am not interested in your product since I am a one man company with little budget and strict policy of not buying goods that are sent through unsollicited faxes.<br>
Sincerely yours, [name]<br>
PS : there is something wrong with our fax- computer : it sometimes sends the text in landscape mode with 512point character size. If this fax is one of those, please let us know and we will re-fax the message.<br><br>

The most amazing thing was that some of them even replied. In which case I did send teh fax again (in 512 point again offcourse, making them pay another solid 6 meter of paper and half a fax cartridge) One of them seemed smart enough to send back a message in 512 point size too, which costed me nothing since I received faxes on my mac. Nowadays many spammers use this feature too, or don't let the fax machine accept my reply. I gave up faxing a long time ago anyway

Wardailing junk faxers

[b1t r0t]

At work, there was a bit of a problem with wardailing junk faxers about a year or two ago. What happened was the company upgraded its phone system to one which could automatically detect an incoming fax on your desk phone number, stick it in your voice mailbox, and let you redirect it to a fax machine or e-mail from voicemail. Oh, and the phone system was set up so that each desk got a real phone number, not an extension.

Kinda nice for sales types who are always on the road. Which would be great, except we were developers, who hardly ever even used fax at all. If we were lucky, the phone would ring, we would pick it up and, like, "beep beep beep" (thank you Ellen Feiss). The unlucky wouldn't be at their desk, it would get stored in voicemail, and their number would get registered as a "live fish", to be dialed again.

$500

[imkonen]

So if I get woken up in the middle of the night only to hear a bunch of whistles when I pick up my phone I get nothing. But I plug a fax machine in and I can claim $500 each time it happens?

I need to buy a fax machine...

Sue the faxers...you'll win!

[jacobcaz]

Sue the faxer and you will most likely win. A company I worked for purchased a fax list from a list broker and tried it's hand at "fax blasting" (this was back in 1998ish).

About two days later we got a call from a guy who said he was going to sue us.. The powers-that-be said, "Hyuck, hyuck, go ahead buddy..." and he did.

He won pretty handily in court too as I recall. The company ended up paying a $500 fine for the fax, a $100ish fine for court costs PLUS $500ish in legal fees to the plainiff.

Needless to say, the-powers-that-be NEVER tried junk-faxing again (never mind it was a stupid idea in the first place).

Tom Martino is on the junkfax warpath!

[gblues]

If you're getting a lot of junk faxes and don't have time for small claims court, you can sic Tom Martino's army of lawyers on them. The details are on a site he set up for just this purpose at faxwars.com.

Tom is a consumer advocate who has a radio program during the day (although some stations, such as KEX tape-delay the program to the evenings). The show's web site is troubleshooter.com.

Nathan

As a foulness shall ye know them.

[The I Shing]

I think I actually detest junk faxers more than spammers.

From what I've read of fax.com, they make spammers look like upstanding citizens.

The hubris of the junk faxers is beyond the pale. Their attitude is simply, "Try and stop us. We're making a lot of money. Fine us if you want, shut us down, we'll change our business name and continue. Just try and stop us, 'cause you can't."

That's an attitude that befits an organized crime operation, which is basically what fax.com is. They commit the same federal crime a hundred thousand times a day.

The $5M fine will have exactly zero impact on that company. They'll make that money back in a week.

What's needed is a permanent injunction barring any current or past employee or executive of fax.com from ever sending a fax again or ordering a fax sent under any circumstances. That way none of them can set up shop under a new name without being found in contempt of court and jailed. Actually, barring them from ever touching a computer or sending email would be good, too, just to keep them away from becoming spammers.

Someone out there is suing fax.com for something like 4 trillion dollars. That would be great to win, and would probably put fax.com out of business, but without an injunction against the people who run fax.com, they'll set up shop and start over again. These people are utterly intractable, and will stop jamming our fax machines under only two conditions... imprisonment or death.