Businesses Try to Gut Junk Fax Ban

An anonymous reader writes "The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits junk faxes without first obtaining consent of the recipient but EPIC is reporting a bill is being proposed by congressman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to allow junk faxes that are now prohibited and to undo new rules that go into effect January 2005 that would have further tightened the junk fax ban. In keeping with congressional truth in naming rules, this bill that will allow more junk faxes is understandably titled 'The Junk Fax Elimination Act of 2004.' There will be a hearing Tuesday in the Telecommunications and Internet subcommittee. I'll be faxing my concerns and opposition to this bill to Mr. Upton and the Committee several times today."

Comments

to save you the time of googling...

[shrubya]

From http://www.house.gov/upton/contact.htm :

If you are sending mail to the Washington office, please fax your correspondence to (202) 225-4986. If you prefer, you may mail your correspondence to either District office and your mail will be forwarded to Washington.

Kalamazoo Office
157 South Kalamazoo Mall
Suite 180
Kalamazoo, MI 49006
(269) 385-0039
(269) 385-2888 fax

St. Joseph Office
800 Ship Street
Suite 106
St. Joseph, MI 49085
(269) 982-1986
(269) 982-0237 fax

Washington D.C. Office
2161 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3761
(202) 225-4986 fax

Re:to save you the time of googling...

[shrubya]

And from http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/feedback.htm :

The Committee on Energy and Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927
The Committee does not have a public fax number.

*****

FWIW, the action is at http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/subcommittees/ Telecommunications_and_the_Internet_Action.htm

Fax Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting a legion of zombie fax machines....

Can a fax modem equiped computer be configured to spam a fax machine as much as an email account. (It will now cost the recipient more to look at the spam)

Then they would all get hardcopies of P3N15 ENL@RGM3NT and all the pictures to show "it actually works" floating round the office :)

Why legislate?

[philntc]

If there is was ever a problem that can be solved through technology and not legislation this would be the one. (As opposed to the madness involved in technologies to "enforce" DRM).

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders? There must be some solutions for this out there.

Re:Why legislate?

[Vuinced]

Well- Our business does not list a public fax number anywhere, not on the internet or the phone book. You have to be told what it is to use it, yet somehow we waste about 30 sheets of paper a day to people that want me to do to disney world for the summer, or to buy their stock.... http://www.jewsus.assassinsunited.com

Re:Why legislate?

[greenhide]

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders?

Hard. Consider the difficulty that most normal spam filters are now having. If you're not using whitelisting (which sucks), then you will receive spam. There's simply no content or bayesian filter that can possibly recognize all forms of spam.

Now imagine you don't have any keywords at all, just a source phone number, which probably can be spoofed.

The only identifying information for a fax is the sending phone number. And, unlike e-mails, it's hard to recognize a phone number as being a certain sender.

Re:Why legislate?

[lightspawn]

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders? There must be some solutions for this out there.

How can a machine tell the difference between junk fax and a valid fax?

Fax messages don't have email headers. You can't parse the links or check the embedded images.

You can either try to go by the source's phone number (if that information is even available) or try to route all fax traffic through a computer, perform OCR, and then actually print whatever you can't be sure isn't spax (sfam?).

You could even try a distributed approach (again, if you route traffic through a computer) if you're willing to let others know who's faxing you.

Bottom line - filtering isn't easy, and we shouldn't have to resort to it.

Re:Why legislate?

[philntc]

Even if it is hard, does this mean impossible? Could 30, 40, 50% or more junk faxes be caught?

It's agreed that email spam filtering is far from perfect, but why expect perfection this?

What would be the optimal approach and result? Surely making it illegal isn't the only resort.

Re:Why legislate?

[Pendersempai]

Problem is, the fax was designed to be an appliance. Mostly, that's still the way it's used. So when a junk faxer sends some spam, it gets automatically printed at the recipient's expense.

Imagine how you'd feel if every piece of junk snailmail automatically charged your bank account $.50 for printing costs... and then imagine how much more you'd get if it were free for the sender...

Re:Why legislate?

[greenhide]

Could 30, 40, 50% or more junk faxes be caught?

Not really. You'd need to put some sort of intermediate software in the fax machine that stored a database of bad phone numbers.

This database, of course, would be obsolete after around 15 minutes.

Usually, most faxes are more crucial than e-mails (otherwise, they'd just e-mail you the information), so a system that filtered out any false positives would be bad.

The optimal approach is to cease using a fax machine. Otherwise, there is really no technical way to filter out unwanted faxes, just as there really is no effective way to filter out spam (assuming you don't want to use a whitelist).

I suppose you could also put in intermediate OCR software that did a Bayesian filter against words in the fax before printing it out, but most faxes don't have any processing power, so you'd have to essentially get a computer.

There are already laws that govern the legal and illegal uses of telephones; there's no reason to make faxes any different.

Re:Why legislate?

[Anonymous Coward]

We get a lot of Disney world ones too. I'm thinking of sending an invoice at 10 cents a sheet to Michael Eisner.

Re:Why legislate?

[silentbozo]

Even worse, junk faxers will use the same distributed mass fax services legit faxers use. The most annoying thing is when you only use your fax machine occasionally on your voice line, but the bastards wardial you, discover the fax machine, and then persist in calling you all times of day and night with junk faxes - EVEN WHEN YOUR MACHINE ISN'T EVEN CONNECTED!!!

If there ever was a situation where junk faxes were exactly like e-mail spam (ie, you get to the point where you have to change e-mails/phone numbers) this is it! Unfortunately my success rate in tracking down junk faxers is the same of that in tracking down telemarketers using autodialers with recorded messages (ie, no live person to tell em that this is a Do Not Call number) - 0%. We need to put out a bounty on these bastards...

The last Nail...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Say goodbye to Fax if this goes through.

Someone WILL find a way to mass spam everyfax they can get their hands on. Expect your phone to ring ,and when you pick up for modem noises to whir and then stop, a LOT more than now on.

Evil bit anyone?

[MarkGriz]

if (fax_status & JUNK_FAX_BIT)
disconnect();
else
print_fax();

It's titled truthfully, by polithink standards.

[Methlin]

"In keeping with congressional truth in naming rules, this bill that will allow more junk faxes is understandably titled 'The Junk Fax Elimination Act of 2004.'" It eliminates junk faxes by legalizing it, just like CAN-SPAM eliminates spam by legalizing (certain forms of) it. TADA! /sarcasm

Re:It's titled truthfully, by polithink standards.

[Zork the Almighty]

How many people are now waiting for the "Illegal Narcotics Elimination Act of 20xx" ?

Re:It's titled truthfully, by polithink standards.

[tsg]

It eliminates junk faxes by legalizing it, just like CAN-SPAM eliminates spam by legalizing (certain forms of) it. TADA!

Like the Clean Air Act wasn't a command, but a declaration: "The air is now clean".

/sarcasm

Personally I have never found an appropriate opportunity to close a sarcasm tag...

A little backwards...

[thelenm]

I'll be faxing my concerns and opposition to this bill to Mr. Upton and the Committee several times today.

... in order to prove the point that your concerns are equivalent to junk?

My solution to junk faxes

[Hamster Lover]

I used to work at an electronics store and we were constantly bombarded by junk faxes. My solution was to enable the access code feature that our fax machine/answering machine was equipped with and I recorded a message with instructions on how to fax and the correct access code. Not all fax machines have this feature, but our Panasonic model did.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but those that regularly wanted to fax us were aware of the code, those that did not obviously were rejected. Our junk fax percentage went from 80-90% to 0% instantly.

shit

[HughsOnFirst]

They couldn't very well call it the "The Junk Fax Shit Act of 2004."

elimination (-lm-nshn)
n.

The process of expelling or removing, especially of waste products from the body.

Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary

Here's a favorite:

[MarcQuadra]

Here in Rhode Island there was legislation called:

"A woman's right-to-know act"

It would have required women seeking abortions to be handed stacks of pro-life propaganda and wait with them for 24 hours before they were cleared for the abortion. How is that 'right to know?'