FCC Opens Flood Gates for Junk Faxes

EmagGeek writes "The FCC implemented a Report and Order on Reconsideration (R&O on Recon) that uses some of the same exemptions for junk faxes that currently exist for the Do Not Call list. The new rules specify that junk faxers can claim an Existing Business Relationship (EBR) to justify flooding you with junk faxes. Under the new rules, a junk faxer could visit your website and call that an existing business relationship. The new rules also prevent junk-fax trapping, in which someone posts their fax number on the internet, waits for junk faxes, then files suit against the faxers under the TCPA. With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop."

Comments

Wha?

[drewzhrodague]

Can we put the FCC's FAX number on the junk fax list?

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we all send all of our travel deal faxes to the FCC main fax number. I'll bet we can get it off the website.

Re:Wha?

[Eightyford]

Can we put the FCC's FAX number on the junk fax list?

Calling all Slashdotters! Please send the FCC a nice Fuck You! @ 1-866-418-0232

Re:Wha?

[LordOfTheNoobs]

My first impression upon seeing this was that the poster had posted not a fax number of the FCC, but instead a previous ( or possibly current ) employer. Thanks for firing me, here's a hundred thousand "Fuck You"s.

[ The number does appear to belong to the FCC given fact checking ]

One solution...

[KC7GR]

Two words: Unpublished numbers.

Give your FAX number only to those you trust, period. If someone then abuses it, it'll be easier to track down where the abuse stemmed from, and take appropriate action.

Re:One solution...

[forand]

I think you are being a little short sighted here. When you are a business you need to make your contact information available to your customers and those that are interested in becoming customers. While businesses certainly do want you to contact them if you are interested in becoming a customer they most certainly don't want to have a similar ammount of faxes on the floor in the morning as they find spam in the email boxes. Keeping a number unpublished is not an option for what most fax numbers are used for: business corrospondance.

Re:One solution...

[Mr. Cancelled]

Two words: Unpublished numbers.

Two more words: "Greedy politicians"

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me give you a clue, here: IT DOESN'T WORK.

I HAVE an unlisted number. I've been very careful with it, in fact. And yet, I get BOMBARDED with goddamned junk faxes day..AND NIGHT. I don't even own a fax machine.

The best I can figure is my number, prior to me getting it, was already on some dumbasses' junk fax list.

So, despite the fact that I pay for an unlisted number, I get an answering machine full of "beep-beep-beep" every fucking day. I've been woken up at 2am by these people, too. The phone company won't do a damned thing about it other than try to sell me new services. And now the gov't has just opened the sewer to make it 1000% worse.

Oh and here's another gem: I'm in Canada. All the junk faxes I get are from AMERICAN companies (I found this out after putting a fax modem on my phone line to find out WHO the hell was sending them). So this decision isn't even a result of my own government's stupidity.

Re:One solution...

[Jon_Hanson]

That doesn't work. I have a fax number that I give out to no one and yet I still get at least one junk fax per day. I have probably been found through war-dialing.

I actually sued a local company that advertised themselves that way in small-claims court under the TCPA. I did end up winning the case but I was only awarded court costs and not the $500 to $1,500 for a willful violation. The judge said that he had to keep things in perspective becuase he doesn't fine DUI offenders that much ($1,500). At least it cost the company in terms of time of an officer of the company (in this case the Vice President of Human Resources) that had to show up to defend themselves.

At one time you could assign your junk faxes to Fax Wars and they would do the research of what company was lurking behind the toll free numbers (no one is dumb enough to blantly say a company name anymore) and sue them. You would then get $25 per successful suit or settlement. Alas, their website has been under construction for a while now. They were supposed to be revamping it so you could track the progress of your faxes on-line instead of calling them.

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to send a ton of black pages by fax back to the sender, of fax-bomb one of their numbers?

Re:One solution...

[JJRRutgers]

You can have an unlisted number and still get junk faxes. Telemarketers have computers that randomly dial numbers, and if they get a fax-type sound on the other end, they "know" it is a viable fax machine they have dialed. That number is automatically placed on their fax-call list, and they start junk-faxing away.

They use this same method to telemarket you over the regular phone: When you pick up the phone and no one is on the other line, it really is a coputer waiting to hear a "hello?" on your end. If the computer gets a "Hello?", it forwards that number to a real telemarketer who calls you in a few minutes knowing there in a live person on the other line.

Best way to answer the phone when the phone number is foreign or unlisted? Answer in a way that sounds like an answering machine: Answering machine-type responses usually results in the computer moving on to the next number.

Re:One solution...

[Thuktun]

So, despite the fact that I pay for an unlisted number, I get an answering machine full of "beep-beep-beep" every fucking day. I've been woken up at 2am by these people, too. The phone company won't do a damned thing about it other than try to sell me new services. And now the gov't has just opened the sewer to make it 1000% worse.

Prior to dumping our landline for mobile-only lines, we found a TeleZapper(tm) appeared to work with these as well as with the telemarketers.

Re:One solution...

[NewbieV]

A little Googling came with with this company.

Quoting from their website:

"That junk fax could be worth $100.00! Fax Recovery Systems, Inc. (FRS) can help businesses and individuals combat the junk fax spammers that send unsolicited facsimiles day and night. These unwanted advertisements are illegal -- and a terrible waste of time and resources!"

I've never used their services, but my office gets enough of these junk faxes that it might be worth giving them a try.

Re:One solution...

[Da_Weasel]

hehe...thats so cute...unpublished....lol

They get fax numbers by having a computer randomly or sequentially dial numbers and listen for fax tones. (I think sequential is illegal though)

Re:One solution...

[ncc74656]

Two words: Unpublished numbers.

One-word counter-response: Wardialer.

You could also end up with junk faxes (or any other kind of call) by someone else with a different number transposing two digits and handing out your phone number. I keep getting calls from some collection agency for someone I've never heard of. I've had my phone number for nearly 16 years. A flubbed phone number is about all I can think of that would explain the calls.

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get 5-6 pieces of paper and tape the ends together so you have one long sheet.

Feed the beginning of the sheet into the fax machine and have it begin sending. As the fax is being fed into the machine, attach the bottom end (the first end of the paper that when into the fax) to the top end (the end that hasn't gone in yet) with some tape.

You basically creat a looped piece of paper that just continuously feeds through the machine and shoots out faxes on the other end.

Enjoy.

Re:One solution...

[Da_Weasel]

Technically yes, but the black pages idea assumes they have an actual fax machine on the other end, which i can guarantee they don't have. The fax bomb idea is the most plausable, but again you are assuming that they have a system on their end that will accept faxes.

More than likely these fax spammers have a few servers hooked up to 20 or 30 Voice Circuits and have the 450-700 lines configured as outbound only. Even if they were configured to allow inbound calls the phone system probably won't answer them or will simply use the caller id info to confirm they have a live number. It's just like dealing with email spam basically. You best option is to have a phone system that can accept faxes and email them to you in an image format.

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

take appropriate action

What the hell is 'appropriate action'? How long does 'appropriate action' take? How well does taking 'appropriate action' work?

Appropriate action, my ass.

Re:One solution...

[AngryNick]

Let me give you a clue, here: IT DOESN'T WORK.

I totally agree. I have been getting the exact same fax calls to my home phone number -- a number that has never had a fax attached to it.

For several months we had gotten some relief by recording a SIT on our answering machine so the dialer thinks the number is not in service, but we recently started getting calls again.

Re:One solution...

[alexo]

> For several months we had gotten some relief by recording a SIT on our
> answering machine so the dialer thinks the number is not in service

Can there be any negative consequences to that?

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fax bomb idea is the most plausable,

A pity it isn't legal to send real bombs to junk faxers.

Re:One solution...

[zxnos]

Two more words: "Greedy politicians"

one more word: redundant

Re:One solution...

[vandon]

Under the new rules, a junk faxer could visit your website and call that an existing business relationship. The new rules also prevent junk-fax trapping, in which someone posts their fax number on the internet, waits for junk faxes, then files suit against the faxers under the TCPA.

This FCC ruling seems like it's actually tightening up the rules a bit.

FTFA:
This definition also clearly contemplates that the EBR could be formed by any of the following: an inquiry, application, purchase or transaction by the business or residential subscriber Consistent with the legislative history of the TCPA, an inquiry by a consumer could form the basis of the EBR. However, the definition makes it clear that the inquiry must be about the products or services offered by the entity. Thus, we conclude that an inquiry about store location or the identity of the fax sender, for instance, would not alone form an EBR for purposes of sending facsimile advertisments. Merely visiting a website, without taking additional steps to request information or provide contact information, also does not create an EBR.

In addition, we conclude that the EBR exemption applies only to the entity with which the business or residential subscriber has had a 'voluntary two-way communication'. It would not extend to affiliates of that entity. While a fax broadcaster which is retained to send facsimile ads on behalf of an entity that has an EBR with the recipient, it is not permitted to use that same EBR to send a fax ad on behalf of another client.

----
In other words, the faxer cannot say they have an "existing business relationship" because THEY visited YOUR site. The only way that an EBR can be formed is for you to ask them about their products and provide them a fax number. The spammers cannot form a relationship with you. You must form a relationship with them. That relationship does not extend to the spammer's partners. For a partner to spam you, you must also ask them about their products and provide a number.
The pdf also goes on to say that you can note on an advertisment, directory or internet site that it does not accept unsolicited advertisments at the fax number in question.

Re:One solution...

[KC7GR]

Let me start out by saying that I think the FCC's action is pure bull-cookies, and an indication that they care more about deep-pocketed lobbyists from the DMA than they do about the public interest that they are, allegedly, supposed to serve.

Now, with that said, it is obvious that the government (notably the current excuse for an administration) is going to do whatever they want. That being the case, I feel that anyone who owns or operates a FAX machine has every right to protect against waste of their paper and toner in any way they deem appropriate.

On unpublished numbers being short-sighted: I disagree. Consider: Voice phone numbers are still a primary point of contact for most businesses that I know of, as are E-mail boxes. If you need the FAX number of some business you're trying to correspond with, it's easy enough to simply ask for it. There's no real need I can see for the business in question to simply plaster it all over the place.

Let me also address some other (admittedly valid) counterpoints that have been raised. Let's start with "wardialers" or similar automated telemarketing machinery. It's easy enough to get hold of a generator, better known as a Telezapper, which will help to discourage robotic dialing systems.

Sure, the telemarketing jerks are aware of such devices, but they're still caught between a rock and a hard place where configuring their equipment is concerned. Set up their equipment to ignore the SIT signal, and they run the risk of trashing their database with thousands of numbers that really are disconnected.

To those who get FAX calls even though they have an unpublished number (and there is a big difference between "unlisted" and "unpublished" -- see below): If it's such a chronic problem, explain to the local telco what's happening, and ask for a new number. At least two telcos I've had service from to date (SBC and Qwest) are pretty understanding about such things. The last number change I had to get around a problem like that was done at no charge.

As an aside: An "unlisted" number is one that does not appear in the paper directory, but is available through the online directories and directory-assistance services.

An "unpublished" number does not appear in any public directory, and is between you, the telco, and whoever you give the number to.

Keep the peace(es).

Re:One solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is- the Faxer (or Spammer) WANTS YOUR BUSINESS. They NEED to give you some way to get ohold of them and buy their crappy product. And THAT is how you get them. THru the contact info the give you.

Set up your own fax (/modem) to dial their voiceline and send THEN faxes. Picket outside their offices. Slash a few tires in their parking lot. Or whatever.

Re:One solution...

[FLEB]

Actually, I have a funny situation on my line-- the other way around. My answering machine message is a short, succinct "WE'RE NOT HERE! -- (beep)". So, I come home to a number of messages consisting of

"Hello? Hello? Is (my name) available?"

Re:One solution...

[AngryNick]

If a live person calls they hear the tones followed by my voice on the answering machine. I doubt anyone would ever think we'd moved or had our phone disconnected.

Don't blame the FCC for this

[Guppy06]

"uses some of the same exemptions for junk faxes that currently exist for the Do Not Call list."

This was called for by the Junk Fax "Prevention" Act of 2005. It cleared the Senate unanimously and by voice vote in the House. Be sure to thank your members of Congress for this one.

Revenge

[Rob T Firefly]

Might this mean a return of the good old Moebius Fax? (scroll down a bit)

Re:Revenge

[meringuoid]

Moebius Fax? (scroll down a bit)

Scroll down a bit, and a bit more, and a bit more... and then a bit more... and then some more... and some more...

Fax Is Old

[chrpai]

The traditional print to paper fax machine is old and should die. The last place I worked at was large enough that FAX was integrated with their VM system and all public fax machines were thrown away. If you wanted to send a FAX you went to the copier and scanned it to your inbox. If you wanted to receive one they fax'd it to your telephone number and it showed up in your inbox. Add in a FAX spam filter module and problem solved.

Re:Fax Is Old

[Alex P Keaton in da]

I work in a smallish office where the fax is always on (Clients like it that way so we do it, but that's another story). The thing I hate, are the junk fax calls- i.e. we get a lot of faxes to our main voice line, so you pick up the phone and you get the beep bleeep beeeeeeep beep. It is obnoxious. Even more so than the "Must invest now" or "7 Day 5 star tropical vacation for $16!!!" that come into our fax line...
Does anyone know how to stop these junk fax "calls?"

Re:Fax Is Old

[smooth wombat]

Does anyone know how to stop these junk fax "calls?"

There should be a phone number at the bottom of the fax which you can call to input your phone number and have it removed from their list.

Where I used to work (state government office) they had faxes on every floor and on those times I would be out and about if I saw a junk fax I'd take it with me, call the number and have the fax number removed. As far as I know junk faxes stopped coming to those machines.

Re:Fax Is Old

[ktappe]

Does anyone know how to stop these junk fax "calls?"

There should be a phone number at the bottom of the fax which you can call to input your phone number and have it removed from their list.

Re-read the post you're responding to. There is no fax to read a number from because the call is going to a voice line.

Best suggestion I can make (if you really are getting many of these per day) is register a complaint with your phone provider that you're being harrassed. Perhaps they can trace the call to the sender and get them to stop.

Good luck,
-Kurt

Re:Fax Is Old

[smooth wombat]

Ack! Yup, I misinterpreted the post.

Oh well, such is life.

Re:Fax Is Old

[Anonymous Coward]

At a previous job, I'd just tranfer the fax calls to our fax machine (simple to do with our phone system at the time), grab the print out, and call the offender back.

Re:Fax Is Old

[EggyToast]

yes, you can report it to the telephone company and they will contact the offending faxer. Next time you get it, hang up and dial *69 (the one that tells you what the last incoming number was). Then call your telephone number and say you've been receiving faxes at this voice line for [duration] and here's the offending number. They'll track down who owns the line and, well, they won't be very nice about it.

I had this happen to me in my old apartment. We didn't own a fax machine, but we got fax calls at 4am for a week. Needless to say, they were not very pleasant mornings.

Re:Fax Is Old

[Eccles]

I use a service provided by trustfax.com. For a pretty reasonable price, they provide an 866 (toll-free) number, and a mailbox of PDFs of the incoming faxes. No paper mess. And I haven't gotten a spam fax yet.

I have no connection with trustfax.com except as a satisfied customer; there are other, similar fax service providers.

Re:Fax Is Old

[optimus2861]

Add in a FAX spam filter module and problem solved.

The problem with junk faxes is less the data, more the time & method of transmitting the data. This isn't the internet where data transmission is measured in milliseconds, and you can have multiple connections to computers active at a time. Even a one-page fax takes several seconds to transmit, and while that fax is being sent, you can neither send one out nor receive another one on that phone line. Start letting junk faxers have free rein and you can kiss the usefulness of faxes goodbye as the phone lines jam up. No spam filter's going to help you when you can't get a call out because you've got junk faxes flooding your phone line.

Re:Fax Is Old

[Cylix]

The good news is...

Anyone can setup their own Print to Fax gateway and Fax to Email gateway.

Though my setup just collects the faxes and sorts them based on some rule sets.

Then everyone is free to pick through the fax list on the servers, open the pdf, and then print the fax if need be. All we pay for is a phone line...

WinPrint Hylafax is a beautiful thing. (Though you can also use scripts to create an samba print to fax printer, but then you need to embed all the things you want in the cover page)

Re:Fax Is Old

[Matt Perry]

I work for a Fortune Global 500 company and we still use stand alone fax machines with paper output. Not everyone has jumped on the integrated techno bandwagon.

Re:Fax Is Old

[mikemulvaney]

That's not true at all. I used to get a fax calling my voice line in my old apartment. It would call for hours every night. I had to leave the phone off the hook.

The phone company wouldn't do anything about it. It was always the same number, and they wouldn't even block it. Eventually I had to just get a new number.

Re:Fax Is Old

[dynamo]

Every time you get a misdirected voice fax, hang up, do your local key combo for call return (often *69), and leave it connected. Then call again and again.

They do a tiny DOS attack on you, you do it right back.

Re:Fax Is Old

[demigod]

Add in a FAX spam filter module and problem solved.

So now all businesses can pay for a FAX spam filter module.

That's just crazy. You think it's OK to send your money avoiding advertising now?

Just because a communication medium exsist does not mean one should have to bear the cost of others advertising. Whether that's paper and toner or extra software to filter out SPAM.

Re:Fax Is Old

[gstoddart]

There should be a phone number at the bottom of the fax which you can call to input your phone number and have it removed from their list.

Yeah, cause spammers would never think to alter the number to opt out to something bogus. Never in a million years.

I don't place any trust in that number any more than anything else.

But with the new loophole that says if you have an existing business relationship, once they KNOW your fax number, that's an existing business relationship. They can spam all they want.

Re:Fax Is Old

[arekq]

beware though, *69 may be a pay-per-use service.

Re:Fax Is Old

[FLEB]

Hint: They don't care.

Re:Fax Is Old

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you get tired of playing dress up. You really need to get a job hippie...oh I mean FAG!!!

Re:Fax Is Old

[EggyToast]

When was it? Mine was in 2002, in Minnesota. Then again, given how different phone company's customer service reps are, maybe I just got nice ones (or you got mean ones)

what a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me this is Bush's fault too? I hate the guy as much as anybody but get fucking real.

They get all the blame for this and no credit at all for the do not call list. That's pretty fucking funny. I'm sure SOMEBODY here (everybody?) will explain it away with some bull shit story that I'm not interested in hearing.

Re:what a joke

[eln]

The DNC list is a great idea, and it does help, but there are too many exceptions in the rules to make it a final solution. Political campaigns and non-profits can still get through, and the idea of what it takes to establish an "Existing Business Relationship" is a joke. If they just changed the EBR restriction to only apply to, say, people who had actually purchased something from the company in the past, it would help a lot.

Re:what a joke

[run4ever79]

Of course it's his fault who do you think signed it into law! It seems like he and his supporters a like are allergic to accepting any responsibility for their actions. Everything is blamed on terrorists, democrats, the "liberal" media, or some underling acting on his own.

Re:what a joke

[j0217995]

I was waiting for this to be Bush's fault somehow. Waiting to read comments blaming him. Until I finished reading the headline.

Re:what a joke

[uradu]

> I hate the guy as much as anybody but get fucking real.
> They get all the blame for this and no credit at all

Then you don't hate the guy enough, I'm afraid. If you hate someone--truly hate them--you don't look for reasons to give them any credit at all. And you'd most definitely listen to any potential explanation for why he doesn't deserve any, no matter how tenuous.

Re:what a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bush administration chose the FCC officials.

Even if the web page has a disclaimer?

[Broodje]

I have 2 comments: 1. What if my web page says "Reading this does not a business relationship make"? 2. You still use a real FAX machine with real ink and paper? Shame on you. And don't quote me SOX rules, I've been there and conquered. -B

Re:Even if the web page has a disclaimer?

[Mr. Underbridge]

What if my web page says "Reading this does not a business relationship make"?

Yeah. I'm still wondering how it would? If I have a website that sells stuff, how does that establish a relationship for you to sell me stuff?

Re:Even if the web page has a disclaimer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 2 comments: 1. What if my web page says "Reading this does not a business relationship make"?

Consult an English teacher. Fast.

Re:Even if the web page has a disclaimer?

[Broodje]

I didn't think about that - you make a good point :)

This is great...

[ezavada]

...because it will just hasten the day when fax dies out in favor of pure digital means of information transmission.

Re:The Bush Administration is thoroughly corrupt.

[InsaneProcessor]

And this gets modded up becuase it is about the FAX and FCC rulings?

Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[jfengel]

I get a fair number of junk faxes as it is. There's no business relationship; it's an unlisted fax number. The FCC can open the "floodgates" as far as they want with regulations if they're not going to prosecute anybody.

By contrast, the Do Not Call list appears to be more or less working. The few political and charity calls that still get through don't bother me much.

I don't know why telemarketers are respecting the DNC, but the junk faxers are fearless. Maybe junk faxes are less expensive to send, so they're more akin to spam than telemarketing?

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[HairyCanary]

I don't know why telemarketers are respecting the DNC, but the junk faxers are fearless. Maybe junk faxes are less expensive to send, so they're more akin to spam than telemarketing?

I don't think so. Spam can be sent in bulk because the existing mail transport system has many loopholes that allow the individual "connections" to be distributed to someone else. Spam isn't actually inexpensive except for the spammer himself. Junk faxes on the other hand require a point-to-point voice connection just like a telemarketing call. There is no way to proxy the connections (that I know of).

On a related note, the very fact that these connections have to be made individually suggests that junk faxes should be easy to police if we wanted to. The technical foundation for tracing calls is very well established.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[dpilot]

I never signed up for the Do Not Call list.

I never got that many nuisance calls, and that hasn't changed. I figured that the Do Not Call list was a centralized repository of live phone numbers, and I would get more calls through misuse than I get without it.

* We eat dinner as a family, and unless someone is expecting a call, we just don't answer the phone, then.
* As a general practice, I NEVER say "Hello" a second time when answering, if it appears that nobody is on the other side of the line. Perhaps it's urban legend, but someone once told me that getting the second "Hello" is the trigger for demon dialers used by telemarketers to hand off to a human.
* Again, without specific expectations of a call, we have the phone disconnected at night. We used to be one digit off of a local police dept.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well junk faxers are a little slower than a spammer, becasue they can only send one fax at a time. But there are these devices call fax/modems and software called a wardialer that makes it pretty easy to violate a number of laws at once and blast messages out as fast as they can be transmitted.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask people who have used the DNC list.
Those that have will say they get fewer or no telemarketing calls.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[Lumpy]

you get those from harvesters. Many marketing companies will run a war dialer across exhanges looking for fax answer tones. (those calls you get that are simply hangups? that's them!)

In order to not set off phone company wardialer alarms they dial randomly from a database that is populated first marking off each one as they go.

you can not hide a fax machine from these things.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[rjstanford]

As a general practice, I NEVER say "Hello" a second time when answering, if it appears that nobody is on the other side of the line. Perhaps it's urban legend, but someone once told me that getting the second "Hello" is the trigger for demon dialers used by telemarketers to hand off to a human.

Yup, urban legend. Many years ago, I worked IT for an ethical telemarketing shop. And by ethical I mean that not only did they maintain their own in-house DNC list, but all of their outbound clients scrubbed against every known DNC list out there. One thing that people don't seem to realize is that telemarketers (the big guys - AT&T, Chase, etc) don't want to piss people off. They also don't want to waste their time; our company was billing something like $20/hr for outbound calling. Time spent calling people who didn't want to talk to them was a waste of money.

When the predicitive dialer calls out, it places somewhat more calls than you have agents. There's a bit of an art to tuning it for different times/locales/etc because you don't want any hangups from now having a free agent, and you don't want any agents without calls. Even back in the early 90s we were detecting tri-tones (disconnected, etc) which was easy, answering machines (which were harder), etc. Once we got a live line, we had something like .4 seconds to transfer the call to an agent along with all of the necessary information on their screen (like the name of whoever they had just called). They would start speaking immediately if it was quiet, since we'd already had one (or some of) "Hello," from the recipient. Two hellos would have gotten us in trouble with our big-name customers.

Of course, this can change if you're talking about a sweatshop selling quasi-legal products, or Policeman's Ball tickets, or whatever.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[ConceptJunkie]

More than a fraction of a second delay after saying "Hello" before someone responds is, in my experience, about 95% likely for the person on the other end to be a telemarketer (who are more and more often from overseas now, so not only are they annoying, but hard to understand... I have to resist the temptation to immediately hang up on someone with a foreign accent).

Therefore, not saying hello twice helps me to avoid most cold calls (if I do pick up the phone which itself is a rare event), and if the call was legitimate, the person will call back anyway. It works well and has never been a problem.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[cfulmer]

So, sue 'em. The law gives you a private right of action -- I think it's $500 per junk fax and (if I recall correctly), you get your attorney's fees as well.

If you want the FCC to get involved, at minimum, you should file a complaint with them -- how are they even going to know about this crap?

a year or two ago, we were getting a bunch of junk faxes to our fax machine. I called up one of the companies and asked for their business address. When they asked why, I said that it was because I needed to know where to serve them with process and then they asked for my phone number and I haven't gotten a single junk fax since.

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[Skater]

Last week, I moved to a new home with a new number, and the first day I had the phone plugged in, I got three telemarketing calls. The first one reminded me that I needed to get on the DNC list with the new number before ADT Security started calling me. (They got to the point of harassment at my previous residence - they wouldn't stop calling. I asked them politely several times, then I yelled at them, but nothing worked. Finally, a female friend of mine who happened to be there one day and answered the phone for me was able to convince them not to call again - I guess they thought, "Oh, the woman of the house doesn't want it," and finally got the hint.)

Re:Do they prosecute the existing laws?

[Z00L00K]

Why not set up a 900-number or whatever applies to your area for incoming faxes? Or maybe use the caller-ID to bill the sender for processing cost? No caller-ID - No answer on that number.

Or just throw away the faxmachine - require signed emails instead or have a web interface where signed PDF:s can be uploaded. With a challenge/response on the web interface it will be tricky for anybody that want to spam you since they will have to do it manually...

One hand does not know about the other

[shoptroll]

Anyone else find it a little ridiculous that this is on the same main page with the FTC shutting down Spammers?

Only in this country could we have one department closing down spam and another opening it up...

Re:One hand does not know about the other

[aminorex]

Why not? We have one agency conducting terrorism, and another waging war on it. Isn't spam at least as annoying as the terrorist boogeyman? If you added up all the man-years spent on spam, I'm sure it would vastly outweigh the U.S. losses in Iraq (although not the Iraqi losses, I'm equally sure).

Re:One hand does not know about the other

[Moofie]

Except the people we've lost in Iraq are, you know, dead. Very few "victims" of spam get killed by it.

Re:One hand does not know about the other

[croddy]

Why not? We have one agency conducting terrorism, and another waging war on it.

I think his point was that in this spam/junk case, they are actually separate departments.

Re:One hand does not know about the other

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a new law.

Conservation of Spam.

Fun day

[Lord_Dweomer]

Stories about AT&T handing over traffic to the NSA...now this...

Honestly, there are some days when the news just makes me embarrassed to live in this country. And when I'm done being embarrassed, I become scared, because of how little power is left to we the people to incite change in the governmental powers that rule and abuse us.

As a 22 year old who admittedly does not know very much about the history of our government...can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this, and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act? I understand that an effective catalyst from back then might not be effective today...but I'm just trying to gain some hope from the fact that some day soon, the people will collectively say "ENOUGH!" and we will be able to go about trying to fix this country into what it should be, and try to patch up the horrible mess we've made of ourselves to the rest of the world.

Although honestly part of me thinks that my youth might be the enabler of this naivety I have that there is any hope of seeing things get better in my lifetime.

(Note: To any who find this off-topic...I would pose that it is on-topic in terms of the government screwing us over yet again, mod me down if you disagree...whatever, I feel like everything is kinda pointless right now.)

Re:Fun day

[utexaspunk]

can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this

I'm not much older than you, so I don't think I can comment much, but I don't think there has been a time (in America) where government abuses have been this bad, at least not within anyone who is still living's lifetime. Nixon and Hoover did some pretty egregious stuff, but I don't think anyone living has seen such widespread and flagrant corruption in America as the current administration. I agree with you, though- I'd love to hear how bad it was, if someone knows of it being worse...

Re:Fun day

[Opportunist]

There've been 2 key reasons for "revolutions". Mostly one: Despair. The other one is idealism, but that one is rarely used and pretty much died out by today.

Despair has been a good fuel for every revolution ever. French revolution, Russian revolution, when people ain't got nothing to lose but their life, and especially if said life is close to being gone anyway, that's when they take up anyone as a leader.

Of course, governments learned since. What we got now in the US (and most of the "civilised" countries) dates back to the Roman Empire and panem et circenses: Bread and games. And of either there is no shortage in any "western" country. You have access to cheap food and cheap entertainment. Everything else is expensive, regulated and culled. Freedom isn't amongst the first things people want. What they want is food and entertainment.

And they got that. Plenty of that.

So you won't see a revolution anytime soon. People simply don't care. They don't care about freedom. They don't care about junk mail. They don't care about anything as long as their bellies are filled and their nerves are tickled.

If there was a God, he'd have replaced humanity with a sentient lifeform by now.

Re:Fun day

[Lord_Dweomer]

"I agree with you, though- I'd love to hear how bad it was, if someone knows of it being worse..."

You know...I think your comment simply states lot about the current state of things....its so bad that the only way to see any hope in things is to hear about a worse time.

Last time I heard about things being so bad that that kind of thinking was rampant was (pardon me Godwin) in the concentration camps.

Re:Fun day

[grumpyman]

... and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?

Uh.... Boston Tea Party?

Re:Fun day

[SydShamino]

Go see Good Night, and Good Luck if you can find it in a theatre, or buy it on DVD.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

No disrespect, but at 22 years old, your perspective is too short to even form a valid opinion. All 22-year-olds in every country are outraged at their government. It has nothing to do with the government itself.

With a longer perspective, you might realize that the "Republicans under Bush are raping the Constitution" crisis was preceded by the "Democrats under Roosevelt are raping the Constitution" crisis - and yet the Constitution survived. Or you might make a list of the powers We The People had in 2000 that we no longer have in 2006, and realize it's a pretty empty list. Or between laments about the death of the free and independent press, you might reflect that with thousands of blogs of every opinion, all available uncensored 24 hours per day, it's a pretty silly thing to lament about.

Seriously. I'm not trying to rail on you. I'm just saying that in ten or fifteen years you're going to think differently. And if you spend some of those years outside the US, you'll probably appreciate home a lot more. I found America in 2004 no more oppressive than Amsterdam in 1999.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

Some would be surprised there was more labor violence in the US than anywhere else. It is true. (Why is the period between the civil war and WW1 so scantly covered in highschool history?)

Anything's possible!

Of course, back then Americans were more independent and had better thinking skills (this was once a country where almost everyone could read a book like _The Last of the Mohicans_).

Sorry... I'm not really going anywhere with this. Give up! It's a generation of swine that would rather be slaves than give up cable TV or their obsessions with Hollywood gossip.

What's the worse that can happen? They can't really take your freedom! If you give up your car, your TV, your telephone... they have no power. What do junk-faxes mean to someone with no fax machine?

Re:Fun day

[Jason Levine]

I recalled this from a History Channel show and dug up a link:

http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?catego ry=oldwest&month=10272956&day=10272985

Basically, some miners were striking to improve living conditions so they and their families were evicted from their company owned homes. When they took up residence in the hills and continued to strike, they were fired upon by private detectives hired by Rockefeller. When that didn't work, Rockefeller got the governor of Colorado to send in the National Guard who fired on the camp. The women and children hid in ditches dug in the tents to stay safe from the bullets.

One of the strike leaders headed out to negotiate with the mining company but was shot dead instead. Then, under the cover of darkness, the National Guard snuck in set fire to the tents. More troops on the hilltops fired upon the people who fled from the burning tents. Sixty six men, women and children died and not a single person was charged with a crime.

I'd call that a pretty big abuse of government power.

Re:Fun day

[The Angry Mick]

The other one is idealism, but that one is rarely used and pretty much died out by today.

Because, as we've learned, idealism can be bought for as little as a $300 tax refund.

Re:Fun day

[acvh]

Keep in mind, in the past we didn't know about the abuses. At least now there are enough leaks to keep us informed.

Re:Fun day

[utexaspunk]

Yeah... that's pretty damn awful. I would hope that if something that bad were happening in the US today, it would end up getting televised and there would be a huge backlash. But given how easily the media overlooks atrocities we know are going on elsewhere, I'm not holding my breath...

Re:Fun day

[Oligonicella]

Please, refrain from the piece-of-crap Nazi analogy. It's demonstrably false anyway, doubting you were in the camps. Re-read your sentence.

Re:Fun day

[geobeck]

... and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?

Uh.... Boston Tea Party?

Actually, that was the reaction, not the stimulus. The final straw was an increase in taxes in general, but the first reaction was specifically against an increase in the tax on tea; that's why they threw it into the harbor... IIRC; I'm not American, so I didn't have that much American history in school.

I think there was also a 'party' in reaction to increased liquor taxes, but halfway through, the participants couldn't remember why they were pissed off, and had too much of a headache to start a revolution the next day.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

While the reviews weren't very good, my wife and I both particularly liked V for Vendetta. Look at this movie not as fantasy, but as a natural progression of the current political environment.

Lies to start wars, religiosity to moralize crimes, secret police, state sponsored terrorism: this all exists now in one form or another. What would it take for a military coup of the government? Not much. A couple of charismatic leaders in the military, "rightous" justification, misplaced patriotism. The military teaching system is designed to subvert many natural reactions to otherwise horrible situations. This is how you can get otherwise rational people to kill others. Propaganda works, and is used continously in the military and by the government, in little ways.

The situation in "V for Vendetta" could easily happen. All of the separate items listed above have already happened. It will only require a small group of people to pull them all together and use them properly as a weapon against the people.

Am I a flaming liberal? No, actually I am a highly-conservative, religious Orthodox Christian that sees the beginning of the state instituted thought to the detriment of all those not in the "party."

"If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon, a minister of death praying for war." - USMC Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, Senior Drill Instructor, Parris Island

Re:Fun day

[Oligonicella]

Please name one.

Re:Fun day

[baalz]

You say that like it's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, living among the sheeple makes me grind my teeth on a daily basis, but when you put it into perspective like that junk faxes don't rate very high in the order of things that people have evolved to worry about. Heck, this isn't even ancient history, lots of people in the world TODAY have a non-trivial chance of thier cause of death being starvation, and as mind numbing as a lot of the entertainment offered to the masses is there is also a lot of good enriching stuff that beats staring at the mud wall in your hut. The reason most people don't care at a level deep enough to risk their life (as in revolution) is because for all the message board flaming this is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Worrying about the *IAA bullying or the idiocy of patent law seems terribly important, till you point out that everybody in the first world lives in the most opulent luxury in history. Hell yeah bread and circuses keep me satisfied, there isn't a hell of a lot with a higher impact on my quality of life than food and entertainment. Everything else is nitpicking that seems terribly important because very few of us have ever had to worry about what really is important. Bread and circuses.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up "Branch Davidian" and "Ruby Ridge". Oh wait, this is slashdot and since they were extreme right wing fundamentalists what happened to them was ok.

Re:Fun day

[Harik]

It'd be pretty horrible if we had a government that would cold-bloodly shoot women and children in a battle between religeons. Such as Scientology using their newly-aquired front the 'Cult Awareness Network' to pressure the BATF into wiping out David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

Or a government that will kill your wife while she's holding a baby, as punishment for not cooperating with them. Ruby Ridge.

Yeah, it'd be just peachy if the widespread broadcast of those atrocities could spur people to get their fat lazy asses off their couches. But hey, Friends is coming up next!

Re:Fun day

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

As a 22 year old who admittedly does not know very much about the history of our government...can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this, and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?

Not that I'm exactly qualified to answer your question, but googling "Watergate" would be a good place to start. Alas the post-Watergate era seems to be fading away in recent times.

Re:Fun day

[utexaspunk]

well, for one, you don't see much media coverage of this.

Re:Fun day

[frogephant]

It's sickening, terrifying, and getting worse every day. But I am afraid the intelligence agencies' abuse and violation of citizens rights and the law is nothing new. I believe it was Bamford in The Puzzle Palace who described how between WWI and WWII, when Congress had outlawed Government access to telegrams (among other things), the Army (then in charge of communications intelligence) simply made an agreement with Western Union (maybe others too). Army agents would visit the New York office (which then handled all overseas cable traffic from Europe) and sit in the manager's office while he was "at lunch" and peruse the last 24 hours worth of international cables. I suspect the CIA and NSA (FBI most likely also) have equal qualms about violating the law today--especially when we have a President who thinks he is the law. Only way to stop it is to get rid of the agencies. And you know how likely that is to happen.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing, it's actually hard for me to sleep at night because of this shit. We're really getting fucked from every direction.

Re:Fun day

[shaitand]

While admittedly a youngster myself, I have asked a number of individuals who were adults during watergate their opinion. So far I have yet to find any who believed that watergate was as bad as the current situation.

Re:Fun day

[adrenaline_junky]

Great question. I'm in a cynical mood, so here we go.

Wish I had a well researched answer, but the best I can do is pull the following out of my ass:

Political science has developed to the point that governments, ours included, are becoming quite adept at manipulating the public.

It has reached the point where, after realizing that their greatest threat is from the educated, they have made the "educated elite" their enemy and worked hard to curtail higher education, thus depriving the future of their greatest detractors.

They have realized that it is not so much deception that provokes anger amongst the population, but instead a perception of weakness. So Bush never admits he is wrong. It is not that he is an arrogant bastard (though he may well be). This is an intentional tactic because his people know it works. Otherwise Bush's presidency would have ended long ago.

Some of the tactics they use are new, based on the latest psychology and marketing theories. Some are very old, pulled straight from Machiavelli's "The Prince".

The key thing to understand is that we have politicians in power now (and not just the Republicans) who ultimately care only about holding onto their power. They may ocassionaly indulge in doing the people's business, but it is not their highest priority.

And why do they want to stay in power? Money. Their money, their family's money, their friend's money, the money of people that look or think like them.

So to answer your question: things will change when enough people realize that they are being SUCKED DRY by the regime in power. And no sooner.

When (if?) the current regime finally does lose power, there may be some catalyst that is given credit. This catalyst, whatever it ends up being, will just be the spark, however. The fuel will be realization by a large segment of the population that they were suckered, duped, and plundered.

Here's something to think about:

The economy is, by most measures, humming along right now. The stock market is doing quite fine. At the same time, and not by any coicidence, I would submit, the national debt has soared from about $20K per person to nearly $30K per person.

Who do you think profitted most by the market being propped up with all this spending? Who would have suffered the most if the market had collapsed without all of this spending? Will the market *ever* collapse? If the people in power can just keep spending more and more to keep the market going up and up, who wins and who loses?

Hint: rich people can always leave the country and go somewhere else when the cards come crashing down.

Re:Fun day

[denttford]

There have been things far worse than the situation today. The odd thing is, I don't believe change is effected by getting people to act, but rather by eventual legislative reconsideration - don't forget, even PATRIOT passed with a definite sunset date requiring reevaluation.

They are rarely brought up these days, but the various Sedition Acts that have appeared in American history were very nasty, particularly the form taken during the 1st Red Scare.

Re:Fun day

[geoffspear]

as punishment for not cooperating with them.

Yeah I find it completly implausible that an armed man would overreact when someone shot and killed his collegue. He must have been ordered by the President to go find a woman holding a baby to kill.

It's sad that there wasn't more media coverage of the thousands of women holding babies that Clinton ordered shot because their husbands were uncooperative. Because we all know that was his reaction to any uncooperative citizen anywhere. Especially the unarmed ones. He loved having them shot.

Re:Fun day

[Harik]

Pointing out my own error, my timeline was off. Waco was due to the original CAN, a group that has it's own problems, but wasn't CoS. It was still a clash of religeons, as Rick Ross of CAN hated the Davidians, and was the one instigating the issue in the local papers. Pretty directly linked to both BATF and later FBI involvement in the case.

Re:Fun day

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Sorry, but I just have to respond to this:

"All 22-year-olds in every country are outraged at their government."

The first thing I have to say to that is: balls. The second thing I have to say to that is, whose fault is that?

Is it impossible for you to imagine a world in which people actually do the right thing because it's right? In such a world, would "all" 22-year-olds have a reason to be outraged at their government? There was a time when young people were PROUD of our government - when they wanted little else than to find a way to serve it. Go to any high school or college campus today and see how much of that is still true.

The problem is, we're at a cusp in history we have never been at before: never before in history has a government been so capable of complete and absolute control over the thoughts, actions, and daily lives of its citizens. The ONLY thing that prevented such power in the past was the inability to be sufficiently efficient with information collection and processing. With the advent of computing technology and the massive automation that accompanies it, that limitation no longer exists.

We are truly at the edge of a Brave New World - and to quote from The Outer Limits:

"If knowledge is power and power corrupts, how will the human race ever survive?"

Re:Fun day

[Harik]

On August 21, 1992, the siege began in earnest. Six U.S. marshals, armed and camouflaged, went onto Weaver's property to conduct undercover surveillance. When Weaver's dogs started barking, they shot one of them.

Weaver's 25-year-old friend Kevin Harris and 14-year-old son Sammy and saw the dog die. Sammy Weaver fired his gun towards the agents as his dad yelled for him to come back to the cabin. "I'm coming, Dad," were Sammy Weaver's last words before he was shot in the back and killed by a U.S. Marshal.

Kevin Harris, witnessing the agents' killing of the dog and child, fired at the agents in self-defense, killing one of them.

D'oh! There goes your argument! And that's not some right-wing milita's view on it either, Kevin Harris was aquitted of manslaugter. (I believe on self-defense grounds)

They later shot his wife while she was standing in the doorway holding an infant.

Hint: What happened is a fucking atrocity and so far nobody has been held accountable for it. No, one 18 month for 'obstruction of justice' isn't being held accountable for murder. Feel safe?

Probably the worst thing that came out of Ruby Ridge was the fact that the only people who give a shit about it are white-power groups like stormfront.

To recap for the retards:
To coerce his testimony on a group he was affiliated with, they set him up on weapons charges. He refuses, and flees. After he misses his court appearance (which they know they gave him the wrong date) they get an arrest warrant. They then proceed to execute the warrant with 400 personell, a military hostage-rescue unit, and Kill-on-Sight orders for _ALL_ persons, not just the target.

Now, is it just me, or does that sound an awful lot like an execution squad sent as punishment for not cooperating? Note they shot-to-wound the suspect, but shot-to-kill his family and pets. Then of course the people involved were promoted and given bonuses for good behavior. The only scapegoat was Michael Kalhoe, who was sentanced a modest 18 months for destroying documents relating to the incident.

Randy weaver was cleared of all original charges, and spent 18 months himself for failure to appear in court. How even that stuck is a mystery to me, given the documented proof the clerk gave him the wrong date. I guess it's every good citizen's responsibility to know exactly when the courts require them, even when not given notice.

Re:Fun day

[grubert]

I've been using that very technique lately, i.e. looking at the 'Big Picture', realizing things like this are more usual then not.

Your post makes me question whether my quest for a more sophisticated perspective is motivated by love of wisdom or emotional protectionism.

  oh, and ignore the previous poster. How I hate Godwin Nazis !

Re:Fun day

[Tiro]

So you won't see a revolution anytime soon. People simply don't care. They don't care about freedom. They don't care about junk mail. They don't care about anything as long as their bellies are filled and their nerves are tickled.

False; Revolutions occur when the old social structures break down.

If you consider the disasterous debt and the inability of the US to control Iraq [and Afghanistan], and the attempts to reform in Europe, with mixed success, you would realize that things are not as stable as they seem.

Re:Fun day

[Bowling Moses]

"...can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this, and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?"

Blood running in the streets is a pretty good catalyst, albeit with an obvious downside. However it requires citizens willing to put themselves on the line for their beliefs, and we're all too fat and happy with bread and circuses these days like another poster wrote. It also requires a free and independent media to report the news, otherwise you've just got a bunch of arrests for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in tiny type in the police blotter page F17. Today's media is dominated by a handful of colluding major corporations, the number shrinking each year with the aid of their friends in the FCC. It's much more important for them to turn a profit than to report the news, and properly reporting a riot about government policy X might not be in the best interests of the media conglomerates, especially if a major buyer of advertising is going to profit from policy X. This is why investigative journalism's been dead for decades, unless you want to count a 20/20 or 60 Minutes investigative story on some crap like laundry balls (Buy Tide!).

One of the things I'd do if I woke up tomorrow a billionaire would be to start up an endowment for a nonprofit media group, kinda sorta like BBC News, except free from direct government tampering. This would be right after I purchase a US Senator, requiring him/her to wear a rainbow wig and floppy clown shoes whenever they're on C-SPAN. The latter'd probably only cost a couple mill I bet.

Re:Fun day

[Anonymous Coward]

There've been 2 key reasons for "revolutions". Mostly one: Despair. The other one is idealism, but that one is rarely used and pretty much died out by today.

Revolutions come about for pretty much the same reason as anything else: money and power. Think the US Civil War was about slavery? Partly so, but only as it related to money and power.

FCC mis-step

[Todd Knarr]

The FCC's made a mis-step here. Junk e-mail is one thing, it costs time and hassle but not money. Junk faxes, though, cost money. The accountants will see the cost of consumables (paper, ink/toner) go up, and they'll be able to tie it directly to junk faxes. That's when the business groups start calling their Congressmen saying "Your FCC's decision is costing our members money. Do something, or come election time our contributions go to your opponent.". That's why the junk-fax provisions of the TCPA were put in in the first place.

Of course, there's also another catch. The FAX-sending entity probably has a FAX line too. If they're claiming an existing business relationship with you, they can't very well deny you having an existing business relationship with them, now can they? And these new rules allow you to send junk FAXes to entities you have an existing business relationship with, don't they?

Re:FCC mis-step

[sqlrob]

Junk e-mail is one thing, it costs time and hassle but not money.

Bandwidth is free? It's (usually) small when you're an individual user, but ISPs have to upgrade because of spam.

Re:FCC mis-step

[trosenbl]

Of course, there's also another catch. The FAX-sending entity probably has a FAX line too. If they're claiming an existing business relationship with you, they can't very well deny you having an existing business relationship with them, now can they? And these new rules allow you to send junk FAXes to entities you have an existing business relationship with, don't they?

Yes, but they have a tendency to either have a machine handle their faxes (so the "mobius fax", a few sheets of black paper taped in a loop, won't be nearly effective), or they will have it set up so that the number does not accept incoming calls.

Re:FCC mis-step

[The Cisco Kid]

The cost of receiving junk faxes may be more obvious to individuals and businesses, but don't be fooled into think email spam doesnt cost money. AOL estimated once that half of its total email bandwidth was spam - just imagine AOL's total bandwidth bill, and take half that. It amounts to quite a bit more than 'nothing'.

Not to mention all the extra servers, storage space, extra wages paid to employess to design and implement anti-spam systems (or the costs to outsource it), to clear customers mailboxes that are too full of spam for them to download over their dialup, to clear out the mailserver queues clogged with undeliverable spam and spam bounces, not to mention replies to spam from clueless customers.

Junk email certainly does have a cost, im money, as well as time and hassle (Heck 'time is money')

Re:FCC mis-step

[castoridae]

Sending junk faxes costs money too - much more, I suspect, than email spam. Unless you happen to be in the fax-spammer's area code (if so, just go over & break his knees), there's a long-distance call involved in sending you that fax.

The only way I can think of to get around this without paying some fees to someone is to set up your own dialers in each area code, connected via internet, and send out that way - similar to an old-school ISP setup (only outgoing instead of receiving calls). Sure there are monthly costs, but those costs won't scale with the number of faxes sent (aside from having to add additional phone lines for heavy volume). I wonder how the numbers work out...

Re:FCC mis-step

[Todd Knarr]

Oh, I know all too well that e-mail spam costs money. But it doesn't cost money in a way that you can tie directly to the spam in the ledgers. Doing it requires a lot of complicated work with the techies, and the numbers are almost always ambiguous (at least to the business types). With FAXes the accountant can say "FAX consumable costs were up 180% last month. Legitimate FAX volume was down 4%, so the increase isn't from normal traffic. Junk FAXes were 52% of received FAXes, and they're the only thing that could've caused the increase in costs.". That's something even an MBA gets immediately.

Please make them STOP.

[lancejjj]

I noticed that starting about a year ago I started to get junk faxes on my fax machine... and now it has grown to 30 to 40 per day... and none of the faxers have ever had ANY business relationship with me. If I ask to take myself off a list, a new one appears the very next day!

Before that time, I used to receive a total of 3 or 4 faxes a week total (from my clients, and none from scam-marketers)

Virtually all of these faxes are of the nature of "HR is sponsoring a company trip to Aruba for $300", "June, I thought you'd be interested in this special weight loss pill, it worked for me!", and "refinance your house".

I'm not sure how congress or the FCC let this scum go nuts, but it's obvious that they have, costing ME lots in paper, toner, and consumption of my otherwise important business FAX line.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[Jon_Hanson]

Just like you should never unsubscibe from spam, you should never call those numbers to be removed from junk fax lists. If they remove your number (doubtful) they will sell it to other junk faxers. By searching out the removal number you are also indicating that you actually look at their crap and that opens the floodgates even more as you have seen.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[argStyopa]

Of course, you DO understand that you're partially to blame for the explosion?

The *first* time you called one and said "take me off your list", you just raised the value of that CONFIRMED GOOD fax number 100x. So you got bumped to the "confirmed good" fax number list, to be sold MUCH more widely.

Here's a trick: put a phone on your fax line. Hit *77 or whatever your local telco's signal is for (Anonymous call reject). Reattach your fax.

Voila, 90%+ of your incoming spamfaxen are now prevented from reaching your line.

REAL PEOPLE that send faxes don't typically BLOCK their fax numbers, and thus will come through.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad, you'll never become free. keep reloading those $15 fax cartridges sucker. out of paper? no problem, 30 pages in memory. we'll even fax you an extra blank sheet to prove how futile it is. if you've received this fax in error, just call this number and we'll sell your number wholesale as a "confirmed" fax line for big bucks.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other thing you really might want to look into is a fax-email hybrid. I have one at my job called Rightfax that issues you a separate fax phone #, and instead of having a machine it simply attaches the faxes to an email, and says what number it was that sent it to you.

Besides helping to filter the spam crap, it also is useful as it scans the fax and turns it into an image, so you can email them easily, print them out, etc. You could even setup your Outlook (or whichever client you use) to auto print the faxes from a certain phone # and it would look just like a fax.

It costs money, but not much at all. There might be some free clients out there that will just hook into your fax line and do the rest.

Worth a look for sure!

Re:Please make them STOP.

[Anonymous Coward]

When they are foolish enough to include a fax back form, we just fax them a copy of the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act, which bans junnk faxes, printed white on black in 24 point font. That way they have a copy.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[RenderSeven]

That is absolutely positively wrong, so you have obviously never tried it. Shame on you for spreading misinformation based solely on your pessimism! If you spend a little time calling every unsubscribe number at the bottom of every fax, you will in fact stop getting faxes. I went from 5 a day to none in 6 months after less than a week of calling the unsubscribe number on every fax. I do it for all my clients, and their junk faxes have all stopped. Completely stopped. It works so well I'm almost tempted to think of junk faxers as legitimate.

I dont know why there is such a difference between faxers and email spammers. Possibly because phone numbers can be traced. Who knows. But they really do honor the unsubscribe lists, consistently and reliably.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[drakos7]

A couple problems with this. I have been getting fax calls at all hours of the day (the 3am ones really suck) for the past 4 years since I got this phoneline. The last time it was a fax line was in 1999, several owners previous to myself. The calls come in 3 at a time spaced 15-20 minutes apart.

First of all, I would have to hook up a fax (my laptop) to figure out who is sending these in order to assault them. But no matter how many times I call and tell them that it is a phone line and not a fax, they will not stop. And they are not from within the US so no authorities that I have contacted are willing to do anything about them. The authorities do not consider the calls to be harassment either, but I greatly disagree when my sleep is interrupted at least once a week.

Secondly, anonymous caller blocking costs money here as opposed to being a nice free service. Sure it is $3/month, but I am a grad student with a family and every $ needs to be saved.

Nice in an ideal world.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[deacon]

You can stop it yourself.

You already know who the valid faxers are. put them on a whitelist in this box.

http://www.privacycorps.com/products/?id=20

Approved faxes get thru. Everyone else gets the boot.

Done.

Re:Please make them STOP.

[tidokoro]

Not sure how to stop them, but may have tracked one of them down: http://enemiesblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/hot-lead-o n-hot-lead-co.html

Govenrment Fax numbers

[WinPimp2K]

Sure you can, get all of the government fax numbers you can find and send em to junk faxers along with links to apporpriate .gov websites so the faxers can create that all important relationship.

You would then expect that the FCC will reconsider the regulations.
BZZT!

1> The government, hit by increased communications would determine the need for a lot more fax machines, and clerks to feed them paper and file the vital communications being received.

2> Certain specific government entities (congresscritters) would however dislike the increased demands on their time and on pain of budget cuts, force the FCC to rewrite those regs so that government agencies and officials can individually declare faxes to THEIR fax lines are illegal.

3>Certain specific entities that think they are government organizations (lobbyists, PACs and re-election committees) would contact the junk faxers directly and explain why the faxers need to immediately donate to the cause - or face the possibility of restrictive legislation.

Re:Govenrment Fax numbers

[voice_of_all_reason]

Sure you can, get all of the government fax numbers you can find and send em to junk faxers along with links to apporpriate .gov websites so the faxers can create that all important relationship. You would then expect that the FCC will reconsider the regulations.

Or, just as likely, you'll find yourself going to pound-me-in-the-ass "terrorist" prison.

Re:Govenrment Fax numbers

[WinPimp2K]

Well, actually, I considered that too obvious to mention. It is not mutually exclusive with the other outcomes I mentioned.

Good thing FAX use is way down

[Rob the Bold]

We've been seeing a big decline in FAX usage for a while now, in companies of all sizes. The small firm I work at doesn't have a dedicated FAX line anymore, and we're not alone. Pretty soon the FAX will be as rare as Telex.

The last FAXes to go are likely the one's in lawyers' and doctors' offices. They like the hard copy, cause it seems more legal . . .

Re:Good thing FAX use is way down

[shdragon]

We've been seeing a big decline in FAX usage for a while now, in companies of all sizes. The small firm I work at doesn't have a dedicated FAX line anymore, and we're not alone. Pretty soon the FAX will be as rare as Telex.

Where I work (sales office), while there has also been a decline in faxes vs. email, the fax machine is still HEAVILY used. We have 10 incoming fax lines. I've never had someone say I can't fax it, but I get plenty of people everyday say that there email's not working & ask me to just fax it. You'd be surprised by the number of people that don't have scanners. Any time you work with an application that's filled in by hand, it's much simpler & quicker to just fax it. So, from where I'm sitting the FAX machine is here to stay for the long haul.

Cheers!

-shd

Junk

[kaoshin]

I think the junk mail dudes are in cahoots with the trash dudes that pick up the trash. One day basically everybody is gonna kill everybody because they're jerks which owns.

I'm not claiming to be pro-Bush, but....

[saintp]

"With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop."

s/6/200/;

The problem isn't this president; the problem is the last 38 or so.

Re:I'm not claiming to be pro-Bush, but....

[vertinox]

The problem isn't this president; the problem is the last 38 or so.

*monocle pops out*

Well I never! Grover Cleveland was the best president we ever had.

Or one of them... Next to Teddy. May god rest his monopoly busting soul.

You people...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read /. via fax... you bunch of insensitive cods!

Re:What about telegraphs?

[novastar123]

actually a lot of places have always on fax numbers, the McDonalds i worked at in highschool did, my highschool did, The 5 person Siding and Windows company i used to work for does, The billion dollar worldwide corperation I currently work for has 4 different always on fax lines that I know of, probably more in different people's offices.

Re:The Bush Administration is thoroughly corrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right. This should be modded flamebait. It has NOTHING to do with the Bush administration.

Selling Out Six Or So Years

[G)-(ostly]

You missed about eight years there, buddy. Ever heard of this little thing called the DMCA?

Yea, Clinton signed that one.

Bush is an ass, but if you can't be honest about why you hate him, just keep your trap shut.

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[Rob the Bold]

Bush is an ass, but if you can't be honest about why you hate him, just keep your trap shut.

Ease off the coffee, man. You can hate people/things even for reasons others don't like. For instance, you appear to hate critics of Bush who fail to criticize Clinton for similar offenses . . .

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[goldspider]

Calling someone out for being intellectually dishonest isn't "hate".

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like I hate people who criticize Clinton (for lying about a BJ) but fail to criticize Bush (for lying about the justification for a war).

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[heinousjay]

You know what I hate? People that mix clever with politics. For some reason that particular combination results in a smug know-it-all attitude that is so fucking indigestible that I feel compelled to dispute every point made.

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[Anonymous Coward]

People hated Clinton for abusing power. On practically his first day i the White House he had career government employees fired without cause and then when they complained to the press he had the FBI charge them with crimes they obviously didn't commit. He and his staff obtained secret FBI files on his political opponents under mysterious circumstances. The documents were never supposed to leave the FBI headquarters but somehow ended up in the White House in the charge of a political thug no one could remember hiring. His assaults on constitutional freedoms were no less dangerous than those going on today. They were just considered more politically correct.

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm asking because IANAL. Just read the act and I don't see what it has to do with this, other than to blame Clinton which I'm sure he deserves, hummer gettin s-o-b. It does "creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright liability" (wiki) which seems like a good thing.

Help me out, I'm an idiot.

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[G)-(ostly]

Samzenpus made it a point to blame deep pocket politics on Bush's last 6 years. I despise Bush, but he's just one in a line of president's who are using the power of the presidency to grease palms in the business world. Hence, I point this out by highlighting one of the most abusive business giveaway laws in recent years: the DMCA, which was Clinton's doing, not Bush's.

As somebody who thinks that much of what Bush has done outside the few weeks around 9/11 has been absolutely abusive and utterly unacceptable, I'm constantly outraged by people like him who weaken the perfectly valid complaints against the man by inventing ridiculous things like this. It's this sort of ridiculous, zealoted leftist crap that makes the perfectly normal people with perfectly normal grievances against Bush get ignored.

Re:Selling Out Six Or So Years

[Anonymous Coward]

What Rush Limbaugh rant did you get those "facts" from ?

Obsolete?

[dada21]

I removed my fax number from my old business card about 6 years ago by ACCIDENT. I've been paying a little extra a month for the fax number (its all electronically processed now anyway) for those 6 years. I don't think a single person has asked me for my fax number in that time -- the only faxes I really receive is from marketers who I opted-in with, and I guarantee I have never made a purchase because of a fax.

Is the fax obsolete? Does anyone rely on faxing (maybe for contracts?) for their jobs? For me, e-mail is for documents I need, SMS is for notes and quick messages. I don't see anything in my businesses that needs the fax other than applications for accounts.

Re:Obsolete?

[ivan256]

Business to business transactions where the seller is extending credit to the buyer (a Purchase Order sale) is still handled over fax almost exclusively. Up until the last few months, insurance business was conducted via fax. Many local governments haven't gotten around to upgrading their fax based systems.

It's almost dead, but it's not dead yet. Luckily, for the most part, the fax machine is obsolete... At least on the receiving end.

Re:Obsolete?

[dada21]

So basically it is government that is keeping this kludge still active. Their departments haven't upgraded from the 80s, and the law doesn't recognize any standard of electronic signature that would aid businesses in transacting contract signatures. Funny how that works ;)

Re:Obsolete?

[notea42]

We still have to fax things at work. However, this is exclusively because our company is nationwide, and the accounting people who approve travel expense reports work on the other side of the country. The company subscribes to a scanning service and to submit receipts for expenses we have to print out a cover sheet from the expense reporting software and fax that sheet and all receipts to a specific fax number. Five minutes later, the scans are automatically visible inside the expense reporting software. I think this is a way to avoid buying scanners, and instead we have big combo printer/copier/fax machines. It certainly is more efficient than physically mailing receipts somewhere.

We also have to occasionally fax signed forms places, especially for security related things where they don't want to trust e-mail and snail mail is too slow.

Re:Obsolete?

[dada21]

Very interesting and also very odd. Paper (to me) is the least secure form of storing documents. It is easily lost, misfiled, near impossible to track, and in the long run costly to store.

Faxing those documents makes some sense, but it is still so antiquated -- a technology from the 60s (or earlier) still being used today.

I understand e-mail's insecurity, but I don't understand why companies aren't using the option of a secured private network to transfer information. Sure the internet is hackable, but there are enough encryption technologies to make it relatively worthless to hack if there are enough layers to transport through. I would honestly think that the best resource for an accounting department would be proprietary software that basically scans a document, allows the user to enter some tagging data ("dinner", "travel", etc) and some automated tagging ("date", "employee", "origination location") plus a basic adder ("amount", "client") that the employee could tag themselves. Once this information is bundled and encrypted and sent via another encrypted network over the Internet, I would believe the company would realize huge gains in reduced overhead.

Are we creating busy work in order to keep people employed? Are the most efficient companies already doing this and passing on the savings to their customers? Will that be the next step?

Re:Obsolete?

[quag7]

*THANK YOU*.

Last weekend I dropped by a church rummage sale and reluctantly spent $20.00 on a used fax machine because my company won't get with the F'ing program with digital signatures. Faxes are horrible; I look forward to their complete obsolescence. That and checks. Hate them too. Whole bunch of things need to be retired.

Re:Obsolete?

[ivan256]

Governments will give up on it before big businesses. Governments typically don't have any trouble telling their citizens that they have to move on technologically when they do. Businesses will keep the old tech online as long as there is a chance it will generate more business than it costs to maintain it. Even with digital signature technology, businesses will keep their fax machines plugged in until they don't work anymore. That's why lots of these big businesses kept their Telex machines online until the '90s even though government had long since given up on them, and they already had fax machines too.

Re:Obsolete?

[Gorshkov]

Faxing those documents makes some sense, but it is still so antiquated -- a technology from the 60s (or earlier) still being used today.

Try the mid-1800's ....... it's a very old technology.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfax .htm

Re:Obsolete?

[IMarvinTPA]

The funny thing about securing e-mail is that it can be. The problem is that it involves both users using PGP or PKI.
I love e-mails that read something about intended for the recipient only, bla bla bla. If that were true, you would have sent it encrypted!
The DoD's on the ball with this one, any FOUO documents sent by e-mail these days has to be encrypted. It is a pain in the butt, but it is the right thing. (The hard part after that is finding all the correct Public keys for all your recipients... Which generally means we send out an unencrypted e-mail that says "go download this file from the website")
As for tagging, there are categories, keywords, and comments fields in Word documents and Excel when you go to File->Properties.
You can use the same certificates for the e-mail to digitally sign those same documents, and even encrypt the documents too.
Everything is in place, it's just a matter of DOING them and getting everybody else to be able to do them.

IMarv

Obligatory "It's Bush's fault" editorial

[goldspider]

"With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop."

Isn't that just assumed now?

As long as CSID continues...

[Typingsux]

This shouldn't be a problem.
(CSID)
Caller Sender Identification
When any fax machine sends a fax, it includes a Caller Sender Identification (CSID) at the top of the fax. This method is useful for routing messages when all faxes from a particular company are destined for a single user.
It was also against the law to send faxes without it, at least it was 10 years ago when I used faxserve on *choke* netware.
Bad legislation is bad legislation however, you can miss important calls for your fax machine when a 10 page spam is coming in.

Re:As long as CSID continues...

[The Cisco Kid]

Most of them forge it. And while that is also probably illegal, good luck identifying the sender to bring action against them.

Re:The Bush Administration is thoroughly corrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a corrupt government....imagine that. All governments are corrupt because they are run by imperfect people. There is no such thing as a perfect man, much less a perfect politician. So lets all just keep bitching until we can get a President who likes oral sex from chubby interns...Oh wait, that didn't work either, he still killed Iraqis with cruise missles, and somalians, croations, and serbians...Even the model President Lincoln was corrupt as Sadaam or GWB when it came to railroads, the (mass industry) of the time. Gas prices are high because the government wants us to by hybrid cars right? 9/11 was a conspiracy right? My God, think before you waste anyones time and brain cells on this type of bullshit.

You are a self righteous pompous ass, if you think you can run the government, get into politics and quit bitching like another cookie cutter disassociated ass.

And if that doesn't work, try to stop being such a liberal shitdick.

-Laz

Voice Calls

[javacowboy]

(Phone rings)
(Me) Hello?
(Fax machine) BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!
(Me) Ugh!
(Phone rings again 5 seconds later)
(Me) Hello?
(Fax machine) BEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP!
(Me) DAMMIT!
(Phone rings again 5 seconds later)
(Me)That's it, I'm unpugging my phone!

Whatever...

[ivan256]

It's not like anybody paid attention to the current fax rules.

Besides, who uses a fax machine for incoming faxes anymore? Fax is a paperless process now. Incoming junk faxes don't cost the recipient money like they used to when they would use up your thermal paper.

Re:Whatever...

[jank1887]

ahhh... thus sayeth the naieve slashdotter. fax's aren't dead. and fax spamming is still a multi-million dollar business. And they do a pretty good job concealing their identity, and avoiding prosecution when they don't. More info at www.junkfax.org

Re:Whatever...

[ivan256]

thus sayeth the naieve slashdotter. fax's aren't dead.

I didn't say faxes are dead. They aren't even close to dead. Read my other comments in this story and you'll see I understand that.

What I said is that fax machines sitting around printing out incoming faxes are dead. Almost nobody doesn't have a fax server, a fax service, or a digital fax machine. There's just no sense in wasting the paper.

fax spam

[goldfita]

Great, I'll show up at work and there will already be cupons for v1agra waiting for me. I hope they don't get creative with the ascii art. Glad I don't have a fax...

Re:fax spam

[robogun]

I always wondered about the type of person who would look at one of those faxes and say 'Exactly what I need!" and buy, and if there were enough suckers to make it worthwhile to send a fax - one at a time - to thousands of fax machines. It seems mroe likely that only the junk spammers make money and the spam "beneficiaries" take it in the shorts.

Just like those stock pump spams have no effect on the stock price, yet there are always new ones next week pumping new companies. The only ones making money are the spammers. What's really cool is you can check Yahoo Finance to see if the spam worked. Last week I got a bunch of spams pumping EGLY.OB, promising a $3.00 gain, a tripling of price, more spams than any I ever saw for a single company. I had to go look. The result? +0.06 (+5%).

The right hand knoweth not what the left doeth

[wealthychef]

Elsewhere on slashdot: the government fined some major spammers. Crazy world.

I saw the restrictions go in in the first place

[ianscot]

I happened to be working a short-term temp job with a computer products company that sent junk faxes back when legislation originally stated you had to have specific permission to send someone such a fax.

That caused a little panic around that awful office. We had a little group meeting, in which we were told that we'd need to do a ton of "cold calls" to get permission to send people these unwanted faxes. Several recommended techniques for getting unknowing employees at the other end to sign off on that idea were provided to us.

I quit the next day, after maybe three days on the job. It was excruciating to consider how asinine the whole situation was -- on our end, on theirs, for everyone... the cost in worthless faxes that wouldn't sell anyone anything.

That was more than, oh, ten years ago now. The catalog junk mail industry has been straining at those restrictions since then, I guess. More than a little out-of-date, really, to be trying to sell hard drives over the fax... You'd think they'd be concentrating on their own Web presences long since, wouldn't you?

Re:The Bush Administration is thoroughly corrupt.

[visigoth]

I beg to differ.

"With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop."

Thus, the original article invites commentary related to government involvement. G.W. Bush is at the head of the government, and therefore is responsible for its actions.

Or are we now embarking on a "new enlightenment" where leaders are no longer considered responsible or accountable in any way for actions of their organizations?

Receiving Faxes Costs Us Money!

[lumkichi]

At least for me it does - I do not not want to have to keep going back to Office Depot for another roll of Fax Paper just so I can have a fax machine at home for legitamate faxes that may come through once in a blue moon. Is the government going to allow me to claim expenses incurred by what is more than a nuisance?

if yer switchboard can handle it,

[way2trivial]

forward the call to a fax machine, observe the output- follow up on it.

we can do this at my workplace, take an incomming call and dial a different outbound number.

Old iMac makes a better fax machine

[Jim in Buffalo]

You know what makes a good fax machine? An old iMac running OS X. It can receive faxes and just store them as PDFs, and even forward them to an email account, and you don't have to use one lick of toner, ink, or paper that you don't want to use. Got a junk fax? Just delete it. Use your email filters to separate out faxes from legit sources (the fax header appears in the Subject: header of the email) from the junk ones. The fax function is included with OS X, and if you buy some additional software and hardware, you can use that old iMac as a custom voicemail system as well.

Re:Old iMac makes a better fax machine

[The Cisco Kid]

Thats definitely a good idea, but it doesnt address the 'your fax line is busy receiving a junk fax so the important fax you do want cant get through' problem.

Re:Old iMac makes a better fax machine

[hazee]

Won't that end up costing more for the electricity to run the iMac than you save in paper?

Re:Old iMac makes a better fax machine

[vertinox]

Won't that end up costing more for the electricity to run the iMac than you save in paper?

Wa-wa-wa-WHAT!? No true nerd leaves his computer off to save power!

Please leave you geek card at the door!

Re:Old iMac makes a better fax machine

[tirnacopu]

An "old" iMac doesn't run OSX ;) We are talking ancient technolgy here. As old as well.. my father! As for the solution - by now there are literally hundreds of freely available applications that can take care of the grey bits coming through your modem, for any imaginable hardware and software combination. Still, none of those solves a very simple problem: faxes are transferred slooowwwly. For a business, to receive 3 junk pages means 1-2 minutes of busy telephone line. This sucks. Storage, deletion, filtering of messages are in no way an issue, and btw thermic paper is very cheap. The fact that your very expensive and needed telephone line is busy costs a lot more.

re: fax might be "old", but it won't die yet....

[King_TJ]

The last 4 companies I worked for still relied on at least 2 or 3 stand-alone paper fax machines, along with computerized fax solutions. Why?

Primarily, there's the "simplicity" factor. No matter how nice it might be to be able to fax anything from your PC that you could print to a printer, you've still got the complexity of the system itself to deal with. Larger companies use networked fax solutions like "LightningFax", where all the outgoing faxes get queued up on a server for delivery. If a dialing rule is incorrect on the server, it might spend all afternoon trying to dial a number without putting a required 1 on the front, or not using an area-code where one is needed for an "in state long-distance call", etc. Or as occasionally happens, the driver on the server might get hung, causing all the faxes to logjam, reporting that they're all "ready to send" - but the telephony card isn't making any calls out.

When your customer is waiting for a faxed quote, your salespeople want an immediate solution. Having that old stand-alone fax machine as a backup is the easiest way to solve their problem, while you troubleshoot the issue on the network fax package.

There's also the fact that sometimes, a fax needs to be sent (or received) by a visitor to your business. Are they going to be able to log in to one of your computers, know how to use the scanner to get their document into the computer (or know how to get a received one to their workstation to print)?

The FCC does not have the authority to change law.

[msauve]

US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(1)(C):

"It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine"

A "telephone facsimile machine" is defined in Sec.227(a)(2)(B) as:

"equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper."

The term "established business relationship" is by law only applicable to a "telephone solicitation," which is clearly defined in the law as different than a fax. Furthermore, the FCC is by law specifically allowed to exempt by law only two specific sections, neither of which pertain to faxes.

http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/fastweb.exe?g etdoc+uscview+t45t48+1372+1++%28%29%20%20AND%20%28 %2847%29%20ADJ%20USC%29%3ACITE%20AND%20%28USC%20w% 2F10%20%28227%29%29%3ACITE%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 %20

Coping

[Phreakiture]

Of course, there's also another catch. The FAX-sending entity probably has a FAX line too. If they're claiming an existing business relationship with you, they can't very well deny you having an existing business relationship with them, now can they? And these new rules allow you to send junk FAXes to entities you have an existing business relationship with, don't they?

Actually, this just gave me a neat idea.

First off, I suggest that FAX machines should have the ability to read CID data, and that FAX lines should be subscribed to it.

What you then do with this data is up to you as the owner of the fax machine. I see three options:

First, you could have the FAX machine pick up the line for one second and then hang it back up when a blacklisted FAX number shows up on the CID. This would be the most efficient and least vengeful option.

Second, you could have the FAX machine fail to pick up the line when a blacklisted FAX number shows up on the CID. This is probably not the best choice, as your line is tied up ringing, and you don't really get much in return for it.

Third, and I only recommend this one for pooled-line and low-traffic FAX machines, you configure the FAX machine so that if a blacklisted or non-whitelisted FAX number sends something, the FAX machine drops to the lowest FAX protocol available (which is a 300 baud protocol) and makes liberal use of flow control. OTOH, if an approved fax number sends something, it will go to the fastest protocol (which is a 14,400 baud protocol) and receives into a buffer so that flow control is usually un-needed.

In all cases, any fax received should have the CID data printed on it, so that the guilty can be blacklisted.

Re:Coping

[The Cisco Kid]

Yeah, just like spam email, the junk fax CID is set to some random number, which you can blacklist, but the next junk fax will have another random CID. Blacklisting CID is as useless as blacklisting spam by sender email address (blacklisting spam by IP is more useful because spammers cant as easily forge the physical IP they are connecting from)

Re:Coping

[Anonymous Coward]

HylaFax will do this.

Re:Coping

[legirons]

Option 4: your automated fax machine recognises the blacklisted number, answers and hangs up, then automatically composes a new fax to whatever government representative you have in that godforsaken country, saying "I just received an unwelcome fax from w, this is the x'th junk fax in y days which has cost my business $z. Could you please campaign for laws to reduce the number of junk faxes I get?"

History

[jhines]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings/ for a time when students stood up against what they though was government screwing us over.

Have your state pass a "do not fax" law

[HarryMangurian]

That's the way "do not call" got started.

OT: Your sig

[jonnythan]

I don't get it. Explain?

Re:OT: Your sig

[G)-(ostly]

The "OSTG Marketing" bot: OSTG Marketing
The "AMD" bot: AMD

Recently, slashdot made a change to the journals system that allows user journals to be submitted as stories. Nobody thought much of it, but the "feature" is really just there so that those two advert bots, bought and paid for, can submit "stories" to the Vendors section of slashdot:

http://vendors.slashdot.org/

This in itself might not be so annoying, but since they're using journals to submit the advertising, if you try to use the search.pl script to look at the latest journal entries by users:

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?op=journals

You frequently get long line of spam advertising how "great" AMD is, because they're just journals that get submitted to the AMD vendors section.

It appears that over the last two to three days it died down some, but at one point it wasn't uncommon to find that from about 1000 EST through the afternoon, the AMD bot would have almost an entire page full of AMD spam up, pushing everybody else's journals off the page.

Not to mention that a site that includes hardware "news" becomes a little suspect when it's (theoretically) so deeply funded by a chip maker that it dedicates a whole section to them.

Re:OT: Your sig

[jonnythan]

So you won't buy AMD because they advertise on /.?

Catalyst

[SoCalChris]

what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?

The president getting a BJ.

Re:Catalyst

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because most men aren't getting them and most women are afraid to admit that they give them...

A bit too much hype

[Jay Maynard]

No, a junk faxer can't visit your website and claim an existing business relationship. There has to be something more, such as a request from the receipient of the fax for information or a quote, or an actual purchase. Read the Order for exact details.

If you do publish your fax number on the net, you can flag it as not being publication for the purposes of accepting fax spam. I just added the following text to my home page's fax number listing:

(NOTICE: No unsolicited advertisements are accepted at either of these fax numbers, per 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(3)(ii)(B).)

I would recommend that anyone who puts their fax number on a web page do the same. (No, I'm not a lawyer.)

Re:A bit too much hype

[EmagGeek]

The R&O establishes in paragraph 13 that if the recipient publishes their fax number on a website, that constitutes grant of permission under the EBR rules to engage in faxing activities. 13. As set forth in the Junk Fax Prevention Act, an EBR alone does not entitle a sender to fax an advertisement to an individual consumer or business. The telephone facsimile number must also be provided voluntarily by the recipient. Specifically, under the new rules, any person sending a fax advertisement under the EBR exemption must have obtained the facsimile number directly from the recipient within the context of the EBR,
or ensure that the recipient voluntarily agreed to make the number available in a directory, advertisement, or site on the Internet which is accessible to the public. In accordance with the Junk Fax Prevention Act, an exception to this requirement will apply if the EBR was formed prior to July 9, 2005.

Re:A bit too much hype

[Jay Maynard]

Further down the R&O, though, it notes that getting a fax number from the recipient's website does not count for permission if there's a note that unsolicited advertisements are not accepted at that number. See paragraph 15 on page 9, as well as the section of the new rules that I cited on page 34.

It's called Democrascy

[edwardpickman]

You have a chance to complain in November and again two years after that.

Just wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the not-so-distant future, you'll get up, in the morning... your alarm will ring out a company jingle, and remind you that you were 5 min late to work, yesterday -- if this keeps up, it'll be reflected in your performance review. You'll get out of bed, and your coffee pot will let you know that the local supermarket is having a sale on a new brand of coffee filters that you would, probably, like - considering your habits. Your stool['night-soil'] will be analyzed by your commode, and you will be informed that: 1) Your doctor's office would like to schedule an appointment to check on your hemorrhoids, 2) There's a sale on hemorrhoid cream, at the corner chemist's, and 3) Your health insurance premium just went up by $0.25/month, due to your increased risk of developing colon cancer. With this joyful news, you step into the shower, where you will be able to learn about a new sign-up special at the local health-club, to assist you in dropping those extra 2.3 kilos that you picked up, over the holiday. Looking in the mirror, you will be able to catch an ad for a new hair-color which will help you to look younger, by hiding that gray (see it, there -- left temple, *three* new white hairs!)...

&c., &c., ad infinitum, ad nauseaum

Easy fix...

[PenguinBoyDave]

Get eFax...comes to my inbox. No wasted paper, no 2:00 AM ringing fax machine.

Re:Easy fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, and when more than 20 faxes are sent to your eFax account in a 30 day window; and eFax starts charging your for the increased load & account upgrade; how is this a good solution?

Sure, give out your efax number to all these folks, and let them start sending you junk faxes - you will be incuring the same (or more) costs than the paper & toner!

Not a good sugestion or solution, IMHO.

Links to background info on eFax:
Reviews & rating of eFax on epinions.com
Replacing eFax with MaxEmail on db.tidbits.com
Blog entry on sippey.typepad.com with details on eFax billing issues
And of course, just hit up Google for "eFax sucks" for more good & bad stories...

FWIIW, I have had a free eFax account for a few years now; only using it for those emergency 'I need to get something now' or the customer/client does not have the capability to send via any other means. I have not had any billing issues, but it was a PITA to find out that the area code for your fax number changed - after spending a bunch of time trying to figure out why the number was no longer working. Thankfully I usually only get one or two faxes a month, so I have been able to stay under the magic 20 number.

YMMV - IANAL....

Or more usefully...

[lax-goalie]

Call AND fax your congressman and senators. Ask to speak to the staffer who deals with either telecommunications or consumer affairs issues. Tell them, nicely, that you have a problem with these regs, and they need to step up. Hard as it is to believe, for the most part, these people really try to listen to their constituents.

House web site: http://www.house.gov/

Senate web site: http://www.senate.gov/

Don't bother mailing, because letters sit in a warehouse for months waiting to get checked for anthrax.

Re:Or more usefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard as it is to believe, for the most part, these people really try to listen to their constituents.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaahaha!
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahah aahaha!
Hahahahahahhahahahahaahahahahahahahaha!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaahahaha hahahahahaahaha!

*cough*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHahahhahahahahhahahhaha !!!
HAHAhahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHHAHAHhahahhahahhahahahaHA hahahahhaha!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAhahahhahahhaAH AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

*sniffle*

No, really. You can't be serious.

Re:Or more usefully...

[kimvette]

What the parent said.

They are only interested in stuffing their own pockets rather than listening to their constituents. I live in Taxachusetts and I wonder in amazement at who the hell is voting for Mr. Drunk Kennedy - I do not know anyone who votes for him, but obviously a lot of people do. He doesn't do a damn thing for this state.

Ditto for John Kerry, who is infamous for missing 1/2 to 2/3 of his meetings. But, given what damage Bush has done to this country, having the President miss 2/3 of his meetings would not be an entirely bad thing; it'd significantly limit the amount of damage one man can do to this once-great nation.

Re:Or more usefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a state legislative staffer, and at least in my state, it actually is true. As long as you have a good rational for whatever you're asking, and you don't drone on forever and waste our time, we will usually listen.

On the other hand, if you come off as a nutjob who doesn't actually understand what you're trying to convince us of (a lot of people are like this).. then your comments get a pretty generic response and are more or less ignored.

Any Chances of a Good Government Story?

[digitaldc]

Any chance that we will read an article here about the US Government that doesn't involve:

1) Spying on its citizens
2) Allowing companies to spam and fax at will & abuse patent law
3) Silencing or changing scientific studies or theories?

Re:Any Chances of a Good Government Story?

[The Angry Mick]

Well, there is the fact that there's only 209 more days until election day . . .

Re:Any Chances of a Good Government Story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, just wait for a Dem to get into office. All the same stuff can happen, but nobody will say anything.

Re:Any Chances of a Good Government Story?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, there is the fact that there's only 209 more days until election day..."

Elections won't do a damn thing, and haven't done for several decades now. You were given the 2nd amendment for a reason, for when elections fail.

He Tried

[TubeSteak]

If there was a God, he'd have replaced humanity with a sentient lifeform by now

He tried, but the replacement didn't have opposable thumbs.
Big mistake on His part.

Let's fix the comment centering please! Mod me up.

[ClioCJS]

A (p align=left) tag would really help about now.

well maybe this will boost

[BlindRobin]

the Canadian pulp and paper market. It's in really bad shape right now.

Dish TV

[Frosty Piss]

It's almost irrelevant. The "Do Not Call" list is rarely paid attention to by spammers anymore anyway; they know that the authorities almost never enforce it. I receive 3 or 4 calls a day from various numbers; usually Canadian, trying to sell me Dish TV, and I thought that issue had been addressed. Apparently not strictly enough.

Here's the rub . . .

[mmell]

IF we insist that website contact is not a "business relationship" in connection with faxes, 'fax-trapping' becomes a profitable pasttime for a certain segment of the population. In slashdot-ese:

1) Post fax number on web to attract victims (and they are the victims here),

2) Wait for the junk faxes (which were, in fact, solicited if you think about it),

3) ??? --> Sue sender for issuing "junk faxes" (which aren't junk faxes),

4) PROFIT!!!

If, OTOH, we conclude that website contact is a "business relationship" in connection with faxes, 'fax-trapping' becomes rather like trying to think yourself to orgasm - certainly entertaining, but unlikely to produce any useful results.

So . . . the first option results in a mechanism for illicit financial gain, while the second option results in inconvenience (and some small but manageable expense) for a large number of people. Our legislators probably felt they had a higher calling to prevent future crimes than they did to preserve our privacy and personal convenience.

I don't believe either of these is an acceptable condition; however, I can't see an immediate solution to the problem. Anybody out there got any good ideas?

Re:Here's the rub . . .

[leomaster]

Small but manageable expense? I think there is a very strong argument to made that NO ONE should be required to pay for a solicitor's attempt to reach them for any reaon. If they want to reach me as a person or a business contact, fine, but they should have to do it in ways that are expenses (in time and money) to them, not to me. Think of all the ways businesses can eat up your time and money with no desire on your part to have it happen.

1. At the door: Time to answer door, tell them to leave.

2. Phone call: Time to anser phone, tell to add me to their DNC list and hang up.

3. Email: Time to scan header, eliminate, set up rule for filter, etc. Money for ISP if size of spam gets huge.

4. Fax: Time to scan paper, toss it in trash, expense of paper, ink, wear and tear.

5. In person: Time to tell them to leave me alone.

In the mail: Time to sort mail, toss the trash. Space in my garbage, additional expense for the city/contractor, increased trash bill, wasted tress, ink, etc. 6. Webbrowsing: Time to close popups, scan page looking for content, etc.

Unlike print, radio, and television ads, where I'm making a conscious choice to consume the media and thus am agreeing to the solicitation, these other types of solicitation happen without me asking for or wanting their product or service. I don't want a law making it illegal to use these methods to reach somebody whose on a DNC, I want them stopped entirely. Why not? A radical idea, but is there any proven NEED for such intrusive solicitation? Not a want, not a desire, not a "it's cheaper to conduct government phone surveys and if we randomly call we don't get skewed results" type of need, but a real abiding NEED?

I do agree with your comment about the fax trapping, but I don't see any reason why I should have to pay anything in time or money for unwanted solicitation or any sort.

Re:Here's the rub . . .

[mmell]

The only alternatives involved 1) Permitting a system which tacitly encourages abuses of the legal system for profit, or 2) Permitting a system where individual rights are trampled.

WE NEED A THIRD SOLUTION!

Re:The FCC does not have the authority to change l

[Anonymous Coward]

US Code Title 47 is delegated to the FCC by The Congress, so the FCC may write and make changes to title 47 as they see fit. There are checks and balances, but this is seen as a procedural change so therefore will not likely be challenged.

If you are going to cite the Law, you should read it all to avoid taking one small section of it out of context. Title 47 Part 0 defines many many delegations of authority to make modifications to Title 47.

selling out the people

[dbialac]

With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop

Whenever Bush is removed from the White House.

Re:selling out the people

[Richy_T]

Score -1 Naive

Get Their Attention

[Nom du Keyboard]

While the article itself is an obvious Troll, and should be modded as such, I feel it's going to take putting a couple FCC commissioners up against the wall and executing them in prime time pay-per-view to get their attention back on the people they're supposed to be serving and protecting. Junk faxes, network neutrality, open telephone and cable competition, municipal WiFi...the list goes on.

The problem is that the Democrats can't fight a war on terror, or keep Illegal (they call them Voters) immigrants out, while the Republicans can't keep Hollywood, the record companies, the telephone companies, the cable companies, or Microsoft off our backs.

And obviously neither party can cut spending.

Re:Get Their Attention

[Bassman59]

The problem is that the Democrats can't fight a war on terror,

The current clusterfuck is NOT the Democrats' war. All Dubya, all the time. Which explains why it's a clusterfuck.

or keep Illegal (they call them Voters) immigrants out,

There's been no proof that illegals are voting. They try to keep as far under the radar as possible. If they're too scared to open a checking account at a bank, why would they attempt to register to vote?

while the Republicans can't keep Hollywood [snip] off our backs.

Funny, I recall actors being elected President and Governor of California. Both Republicans. Is there a connection?

To back up sqlrob's comment and expand upon it.

[plopez]

Not only is bandwidth not free, support staff to run and maintain email servers are not free. Disk space is not free. The cost of virus scanning software is not free. The time wasted by busy workers wading through spam to get to their business email is not free.

Spammers steal from all of us.

one has to wonder when if it is going to stop

[klenwell]

With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop.

Maybe the Democrats will get a clue and roll out something a la Gingrich's "Contract with America," like:

THE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH AMERICA

faxes and email differ

[sacrilicious]

Of course, you DO understand that you're partially to blame for the explosion? The *first* time you called one and said "take me off your list", you just raised the value of that CONFIRMED GOOD fax number 100x. So you got bumped to the "confirmed good" fax number list, to be sold MUCH more widely.

Huh? This line of thought applies to email, where sending to a non-existent address and sending to an existing address may only be differentiated by a "remove me from your spam list" reply, but a fax number is confirmed as "good" the instant the fax is sent.

Re:faxes and email differ

[Anonymous Coward]

no it means someone actually took the time to read the spam to locate the nearly undecipherable phone number hidden somewhere on the page. in the spam business "read" is as good as "interested" which of course means "potential buyer!" as opposed to some desk clerk that spots spam immediately and tosses it out because he's too busy to even bother replying. spammers get their rocks off annoying people. an annoyed pissed off person is like the stuff that nourishes them... trust me... i used to be a spammer. to us, its not only business... its food.

Re:faxes and email differ

[sacrilicious]

in the spam business "read" is as good as "interested"

Hmm, not sure how prepared I am to believe this. Replies to spam email supply valuable knowledge of existence... but fax spammers already know that a successfully sent fax means there's a live human on the other end who's paying electric/phone bills and restocking paper/toner. To assume a "buzz off" reply indicates interest seems off base... it'd make more sense to attribute interest to a reply that reads "I'd like to buy, here's my credit card number."

Still, supposing that this were true, this function attributed to reply faxes (differentiating between "not interested" vs a perverted definition of "interested") is radically different from the function of a reply in the email spam domain (differentiating between "definitely exists" vs "unknown whether exists"). The tone of the great-grandparent post ("...of course, you DO understand that you're partially to blame...") implies that it should be obvious to people that replying to junk spam upped their score; given that the signal being sent is -- in effect -- quite different, I remain convinced that it is not at all obvious.

And if spammers take a "do not bug me further" reply fax as evidence of actual interest, that's probably good news... such ignorance would seem destined to count against them.

Re:faxes and email differ

[Anonymous Coward]

think of it like bait. spammers are looking for suckers and easy targets, after all, almost all of what they advertise are scams, stock tips, deals that aren't really deals. So they aim for smaller businesses and ordinary people. Precisely those that reply in a huff to junk faxes. Also, if your fax machine is set to TAD/FAX instead of just FAX, spammers detect those too and send more junk regardless of whether or not you reply. TAD/FAX = smalltime business/good targets. If their tactics didn't work, we wouldn't get junk faxes.

VoIP and the next presidential campaign

[Cyphertube]

I have two parts to my two cents here.

I remember when I used to use a regular land line all the time that I got faxes all the time sent to whatever phone line I had. I always loved the automatic fax spam at 10pm or whatever. Phone numbers get recycled, and for some reason so many places use really old phone book software (probably because it costs them a whopping $10 by then). So, my solution is to be on VoIP. I don't really want a ton of places calling me anyway, so my friends have my contact info. If for some reason I start to get a bunch of calls, I can change numbers easily.

The second thing is that we need to start really questioning politicians. During the next presidential campaign, we need to look for comprehensive answers to questions, and not just soundbites. What does better education mean? What about health insurance, taxes, foreign policy, etc.? But there is more to my life than that. How do they see television, Internet, and other data? That's important to me. What about DRM? Do they think it's a great feature or is a pain? What do they know about copyright? What do they know about gardening, or the price of food? How do they see a balance between farmers and the poor? What about the quality of food? Or postal regulations, or delivery regulations? Do they have any opinion on how postal privatization has succeeded or failed?

I want to know things about candidates that really affect my life, not just my belief system. Of course I don't want some guy whose beliefs massively contradict mine, but that's for most people. But I really want to know on a practical level, how is any candidate going to affect my life? If we ask these questions, maybe we won't get FCC commissioners who are simply tools of corporations. (Or Treasury Secretaries, or Defense Secretaries, or a useless Sec of State.)

Re:Bush could veto it, you know.

[vertinox]

Don't tell me this is Bush's fault too?

Seriously, every bill that passes congress (a republican or democrat) is the fault of the President unless Congress over rides him with a 2/3rds majority.

Even if he doesn't bother reading the bill and rubber stamps it... It is still his fault because he isn't using his authority to not pass bad laws.

And who has visited more web sites than anyone?

[notnAP]

Under the new rules, a junk faxer could visit your website and call that an existing business relationship.

Oh my God, we're all about to be flooded with faxes from the Google Bots.

Big in Japan

[slyborg]

And the rest of Asia. Fax is still the quickest way to move ideographic text around, although I suspect that people are getting more used to using a keyboard to enter such data. When there is a commonly available way to use real-time OCR for Chinese/Japanese, I suppose that will finally obviate the widespread use of written communications.

It will stop

[iminplaya]

when enough voters say, "STOP!", and not a minute before. Anybody here think it will become an election issue? I doubt it. Talk about tax cuts and terrorism, and all thoughts of spam go right out the window. Junk faxes are much worse than annoying phone calls. Now they're using up my paper. I use thermal paper, no toner needed. The only solution for me now is to have my modem take the fax (Yay! the modem isn't dead yet). I can always erase it from my hard drive.

No...

[msauve]

The law says "The Commission shall prescribe regulations to implement the requirements of this subsection." The FCC is strictly limited to implementing the law, it does not have authority to change it, even under our current unconstitutional government

Congress, which only has powers given by the Constitution, does not have any power to delegate legislative authority to other bodies (especially not unelected ones). We fought and won a war over that principle.

I fully understand that this and many other Constitutional limitations are effectively ignored, but that does not change the facts (nor does a Supreme Court ruling which concludes that "black is white"). The Constitution itself is quite clear that legislative power may not reside anywhere except Congress itself - "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." It gives no power to delegate those powers, and of course the regulatory situation runs headsquare into the always ignored 10th Amendment.

Interesting reading: https://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv18n1/reg1 8n1-readings.html

Explicit Authorization

[Migraineman]

I'd like to see clarification in the legislation:

"I pay for my fax line. It's there for my convenience, paid for at my expense. You and everyone else has exactly *zero* right to use my telephone line (which I lease) or my equipment (which I own) simply because it has a connection to the PSTN. Only persons explicitly authorized to use the equipment may do so."

If you don't have explicit authorization to use my facilities and equipment, you may not do so. I shouldn't be constantly performing defensive maneuvers to protect my fax line (which you obstruct with spam.) You spamming asshats shouldn't be abusing the telecommunications networks in the first place. Legislation should put you cockroaches out of business.

Your Post/Quote

[buddhaseviltwin]

To sum up your post and signature (I'm going to get a lot of milage out of it), I'm going to defer to one of my favorite George Bernard Shaw quotes.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
        George Bernard Shaw

    Your quote had such a profound effect on me that it occurred to me that our basic human condition is so primitive that even after 20 years of intellectual "incubation" (quality of incubation can be debated), AFTER ALL THAT, you still wonder if some of the output is sentient or just merely more "sentient" than an advanced chatter bot that's been inundated with knowledge for 20 years.

    I can't wait until we're replaced by the machines.

FAX is Dead!

[cwsulliv]

Junk phone calls ruined the POTS telephone system as a means of quick personal communication and junk messages are ruining FAX the same way.

I got tired of spending money on FAX supplies to support the junk FAX messages which comprised 95% of those received (over an unlisted phone line no less) and now keep the FAX machine turned off. If someone calls and says they have a FAX for me, then I'll turn it back on.

The FCC does practically nothing to enforce the regulations they generate, so it makes little difference what they are. I filed a few dozen complaints with them, taking care to provide all required information, but 6 months later I was still getting junk FAX from the same sources.

The Final Solution

[Dimensio]

Two better words: KILL THEM.

If the government is going to literally open the floodgates to allowing criminal scum to waste toner and paper of others, then we need to declare open season, track down junk faxers and kill them. Blow their brains out, cut the brake lines in their cars, douse them in gasoline and set them on fire, whatever. People who do that do not deserve to live.

What is really important

[Opportunist]

I guess you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And while it's a little imprecise, it sums up the problem quite well.

Yes, sure, when you have NOTHING you couldn't care less about "problems" like DRM or spam. You got better things to do. But does that mean I should stop worrying altogether as soon as I got a burger in my stomach and Galactica on my TV (or HDTV)?

It worries me that people actually do just that. They don't care anymore what's going on with their life and how they are reduced to being consumers instead of actually being people and treated as such. It seems everything everyone wants is more money to consume more. Self-realization has been replaced with the urge to own more toys.

Is that where we, as a species, are going? I mean, the saying "best thing since sliced bread" alone tells a lot about the mindset of some people. As if bread that's already cut into comfortable slices marks some achivement...

Re:What is really important

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-realization has been replaced with the urge to own more toys.

No, self-realization is now measured by the number of toys you own. Materialism is the real problem here. People aren't finding any other goals in life than to get more stuff. At a certain level, the very thought of that is repugnant to most people, and yet in many cases they've slipped into it themselves. Having stuff isn't detrimental to us, it's the constant striving for more and making it a higher goal than any real progress (in any field) that is a danger.

It's this exact reason that Paul wrote this in 1 Timothy 6:10 (in the Bible, in case you didn't know):

The love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some... have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.

(For the inquisitive, the "..." in the above quote takes the place of things not relevant to the current discussion.)

Re:What is really important

[Opportunist]

The Bible would contain so many useful ideas and guidelines (especially the NT). Too bad it's usually only abused to oppress some groups certain right wing nuts don't like.

Funny, though, that you hardly hear them quote the parts about "love thy neighbour" and "forgive and forget".

fax machines will be taken offline

[Wansu]

I remember the days of junk faxes. This was before cheap plain paper fax machines became ubiquitous. Most businesses used inexpensive faxes with a thermal printer. We'd come in on Monday morning and find the entire roll of paper used up with coils of junk faxes strewn about on the floor. We'd miss important faxes due to all the junk fax noise. Customer orders were lost. The fax machine became almost useless. A small cheer went up when we heard junk faxes had been outlawed. Here we go again ...

Easy fix... easy way to get hosed

[IrishMASMS]

Eh, and when more than 20 faxes are sent to your eFax account in a 30 day window; and eFax starts charging your for the increased load & account upgrade; how is this a good solution?

Sure, give out your efax number to all these folks, and let them start sending you junk faxes - you will be incuring the same (or more) costs than the paper & toner!

Not a good sugestion or solution, IMHO.

Links to background info on eFax:
Reviews & rating of eFax on epinions.com
Replacing eFax with MaxEmail on db.tidbits.com
Blog entry on sippey.typepad.com with details on eFax billing issues
And of course, just hit up Google for "eFax sucks" for more good & bad stories...

FWIIW, I have had a free eFax account for a few years now; only using it for those emergency 'I need to get something now' or the customer/client does not have the capability to send via any other means. I have not had any billing issues, but it was a PITA to find out that the area code for your fax number changed - after spending a bunch of time trying to figure out why the number was no longer working. Thankfully I usually only get one or two faxes a month, so I have been able to stay under the magic 20 number.

YMMV - IANAL....

READ THE #$^%$% Order!

[cfulmer]

Isn't there ANY CHECKING AT ALL for the veracity of top-level posts? The FCC's order is so far apart from what the original poster claimed.

First of all, you CANNOT visit a website and legitimately claim an existing business relationship -- the act contains a definition of a relationship, and it does NOT include visiting a web site.

Secondly, the FCC was just implementing a law passed by CONGRESS. This is something that they were ordered to do, not something that they're doing sua sponte.

Third, I see NOTHING in here about junk-fax trapping. I do see that if you have an established business relationship and your customer posts their fax number on their website, you can use that to send them a fax. If they haven't given you their number (either personally or via the web), you cannot junk-fax them even with an established business relationship.

Fourth, there are industries which commonly and legitimately use faxes as a means of accepting advertising. For example, realtors who regularly fax listings to home purchasers in the market or food-service companies who fax their restaraunt customers with the lastest specials and price sheets.

The rules also require that junk faxes have clear opt-out provisions on the cover page and they have to take the recipient out within 30 days.

Re:READ THE #$^%$% Order!

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, you CANNOT visit a website and legitimately claim an existing business relationship -- the act contains a definition of a relationship, and it does NOT include visiting a web site.

The statute was amended to define posting your fax number on your web site as giving consent to receiving junk faxes (junx). This has nothing to do with the established business relationship.

Fourth, there are industries which commonly and legitimately use faxes as a means of accepting advertising. For example, realtors who regularly fax listings to home purchasers in the market or food-service companies who fax their restaraunt customers with the lastest specials and price sheets.

Again, you miss the point. The issue is CONSENT. Sending unsolicited ads via fax was outlawed in 1992. In illegal act is never a legitimate practice.

Re:READ THE #$^%$% Order!

[cfulmer]

You are really misreading the statute and the order. The statute, PL 109-21, bans unsolicited faxes unless (1) there is an established business relationship, (2) the fax number was obtained legitimately (including from the recipient's web site) AND (3) there's an opt-out notice on it. Posting the fax number on your web site only becomes consent if you have an established business relationship. It is not general consent to receive junk faxes from anybody.

People are making the argument that "going to their Internet site" is a prior business relationship and that (1) and (2) short circuit as a result. That's an absurd reading from botth a factual standard (who considers a business relationship to exist just because somebody visits your website?) and from a statutory construction standard. Judges assume that when Congress lists two conjuctive requirements, it actually wants them both to be met.

My 4th point was to demonstrate that there are legitimate reasons for this sort of thing which have nothing to do with hyping stocks, identity theft or bum vacation deals, not to assert that doing these things under the prior statute was acceptible. (I pulled the information out of the order itself.)

Re:What about telegraphs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. If you had actually worked with a large business (no, I don't mean your uncle Stan's bait and tackle shop), you'd know that fax machines are everywhere. And they are always on.

Junk Fax Trapping???

[gstoddart]

The new rules also prevent junk-fax trapping, in which someone posts their fax number on the internet, waits for junk faxes, then files suit against the faxers under the TCPA.

Hmmmm ... but if I read that correctly, if you publish your fax number, and receive junk faxes, you can't sue.

How can it be different to publish your fax number KNOWING some bastard is gonna spam you, and KNOWING you will sue him, than, say .... publishing your fax number NOT knowing some bastard is gonna spam you, and THEN sueing him???

Basically they're saying "If your fax number has been published, you can't sue for violating the fax-spam law"; and I'm sure some weasel of a lawyer will be easily able to make this case, since the only difference is wether or not you posted the fax number to catch people spamming or not.

This is a bloody joke.

The FCC hasven't got a clue, and the government is allowing anything business friendly to happen without even considering what it means.

Re:Junk Fax Trapping???

[sik puppy]

Read a little closer. You can publish a fax number with a notation to the effect of "This number does not accept fax advertisements" (I'm not going to go back and reread that entire document again)

So if you have a web site, list a fax and post that you don't accept junk fax, you should still be able to sue. Or if you list a fax # when you register a domain. The spammers will pick it up, but you can nail them because that isn't a public list, it is strictly to contact you re an issue with your domain.

BTW probably the single worst fax spammer out there is fax.com - they are relentless and ignore don't spam me orders.

Re:Junk Fax Trapping???

[gstoddart]

I can't get to the document from here, so I'll take your word for that.

So if you have a web site, list a fax and post that you don't accept junk fax, you should still be able to sue. Or if you list a fax # when you register a domain. The spammers will pick it up, but you can nail them because that isn't a public list, it is strictly to contact you re an issue with your domain.

But how are you going to find out where they got it from? All it takes is for your fax number to exist in more than one place, and it will probably travel around on its own.

I would like to think you're right, but since everyone who spams me somehow tries to claim that I've opted in (certainly not) or that I could go someplace and opt out (yeah, right) that they're entitled to spam me.

I just don't trust these mechanisms at all. There is no facility for revocation that I can see. Once, through whatever dodgy method they give themselves permission, you can't say "stop and leave me alone" and meaningfully enforce it.

Solution for faxes

[kimvette]

Here is a solution for junk faxes. No, it is not a perfect one but it is a multi-pronged approach. Item #2 applies to email spam as well (I've done it and successfully stopped companies from spamming)

1. Use asterisk or faxworks pro as your fax machine, and do not have it print faxes by default. It won't stop incoming junk faxes (blocking by CID won't help since CID is easily spoofed) but at least it'll save on toner/ink and trees.

2. Call the 800-line on the junk fax (or spam) off-hours repeatedly, filling up the voice mail. Let them know every few voicemails that "what you are experiencing right now is not harassment, but a response to the unsolicited invitation to call, and that having to wade through these voicemails is exactly what receipients of you junk/spam has to do, and would you even consider doing business with me now? Now flip that and put me in your place, why the hell will I ever consider buying your product or services?" - now that I have asterisk in place I am developing a script that I can fire off and run for a few hours to completely fill their voicemail systems - up to now I've been doing it manually. This method has caused at least two major spam customers to stop spamming. It must have sucked being them, having to wade through 100 or so voicemail messages, some of which might be loud music, some which might be sound from a seinfeld episode, and some being the reminder that wading through these voicemails is not fun, and so forth. The best ones are the companies which will record voicemail for as long as the phone is off-hook, then you can just put your phone in front of a TV or radio and fill their voicemail without effort, interrupting their normal course of business. I also remind them that they're paying for the phone calls, not me, and thank you for the convenience.

It may seem like a juvenile response, and were it the first attempt it would be. I try calling them and politely ask them to stop spamming, but never give them my email address (it would only confirm a valid email address and make it more valuable to spammers), and then if they continue I resort to the above methods. I give them only ONE chance to stop spamming, because if they're spamming me, they're also spamming millions of other people, and it takes brute force to get these companies to stop. They know they're doing wrong, and yet they go forward with these unethical advertising practices because it's such a low overhead, and having just one sale in response to a spam campaign is normally worthwhile, but not if they have to pay their CSRs to wade through voicemail for hours every day PLUS pay for the "toll-free" calls that aren't generating sales every day.

More people should use this approach, because it works. Congress won't help stop spam, law enforcement won't, and the spammers haven't even heeded death threats from the irresponsible anti-spam activists, so the logical course of action is to severely disrupt their normal course of business and hit them where it hurts most: by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

my personal experience

[resfilter]

this personally pisses me off, as i've had to change my phone number twice due to auto-dialing fax spammers of the worst scale.

i don't know how i got on the lists in the first place.. i had a fax machine in place for only 2 days, and only two or three people that were not very close friends had the number. i think the phone company sold me out.

24 hours a day, at 15 minute intervals on average, the fax spam would come. in the complete absense of a fax machine, i just got a really loud beep in my ear every time i answered the phone. the autodialers are not intelligent enough to leave you alone when a fax machine never answers.

when i plugged a fax machine in to see what they were, they were ads for everything from investors to weed pullers to vacation plans. i even got 'enlarge your penis' ads.

i tried to keep track of the numbers and block them via the phone company, but there were so many of them (several hundred when i gave up, and from all over the country), it was pointless.

does this sound familiar to anyone with an e-mail account?

after that experience, i consider fax spam worse than e-mail spam.

i pity those who actually have fax machines plugged in and have to deal with it, the paper and toner/ink costs must be insane.

as long as I have been paying close attention...

[zogger]

..which is well over 40 years now, it's always been this way.

My recommendation is to stop supporting either the D or R party, acknowledge both of them are completely "broken", there is no fix available for them, the corruption just goes way too deep, and something newer should be supported instead.

    It's the entrenched good old boy bribe and lobby system that is at work, along with the "shadow" government of crooks that exists deep within the civil and military non-elected folks..

    Get in some REALLY new fresh blood that isn't tainted and corrupted from the beginning and you might see honest government again. You might, and that is the only credible chance at this point.

  Keep falling victim to those parties biennial FUD campaigns that you are "wasting" your vote to not vote for them because "this time it will be different", and all you do is keep swapping out one set of crooks for another, back and forth, back and forth, ie "lather, rinse, repeat". Lucy-charlie brown-football. Comes a time to just admit reality and that maybe you've been faked out and conned enough..

Admit reality, they have jointly hijacked government and turned it into a jobs and skimming program for criminal gangs, with a shared agreement to do everything they can to squash third parties and independents. All the way to manipulating the mass media at the top I will add. This is obvious as all get out.

    A lot of their grassroots supporters are very well meaning and honest-on both sides, this is true facts, but once past the county level...well, your default outlook at contemplating them as humans should be "crook". The odds are heavily in your favor that way. I would doubt there's more than perhaps a dozen or so uncorrupted members in both houses or the higher level judiciary at this point, and I include them because they are all D or R party hacks for the most part, that's how they got those appointments in the first place..

The only "wasted" vote is one not cast - or one hijacked by computerised voting. That needs to be fixed as well, but you will NOT see that happen with the D or R party running things.

Of course they are

[HangingChad]

With all of the government-sponsored selling out of The People that has been going on in the past, say, 6 or so years, one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop.

The Republicans may suspect many are going to get their walking papers this fall so they're shoveling out the industry favors as fast as the lobbyists can crank it out the legislation. Paper the landscape with industry favorable legislation to keep the money flowing as long as possible.

It's just wretched. And even more pathetic that so many here continue to support them.

This is plain wrong

[cheezedawg]

From the /. article summary:
Under the new rules, a junk faxer could visit your website and call that an existing business relationship.

From the PDF that he linked to:
Merely visiting a website, without taking additional steps to request information or provide contact information, also does not create an EBR.

Lets quit with the hysterics, ok?

Re:This is plain wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster is actually right, and you are actually right, too. Although, he's right for the wrong reason, and so are you. Also from the PDF:

Commenters contend that it would be unduly burdensome for senders of facsimile advertisements to verify that a consumer voluntarily agreed to make the facsimile number public in every instance.52 We agree. Therefore, we determine that a facsimile number obtained from the recipient's own directory, advertisement, or internet site was voluntarily made available for public distribution...

So, while an EBR is not established by the posting of a fax number, the commission concluded that posting a fax number on a public Internet site constituted consent to send junk faxes.

A deal? come on!

[cachimaster]

I was specting that he becomes a sith and zap the bastards
"unlimited power!!! BZZZZBZBZBZBBZBZBZ!!!!"

Sheesh

[tfcdesign]

A dig at Bush? No one has matured in 6 years, either.

Re:Sheesh

[EmagGeek]

That's what it takes to get posted on slashdot... a very transparent troll on my part, and it worked :)

Where's Dave Barry when you need him?

[doi]

Hey Dave, how about putting some federal fax numbers (FCC especially) in your column like you did with the telemarketing association? Only genius like yours could properly elucidate the issue for your readers. :)

past 6 years?

[f1055man]

what? you didn't actually believe that "we the people" shit did you? You think this has been going on for 6 years?

Employ "throw-away" fax numbers

[ratboy666]

I use j2 to give me a receive fax and receive message. j2 takes the call and forwards the fax or voice message to a specified email account. I use a hotmail account and then transfer the hotmail to regular email with gotmail.

If either the hotmail or the fax gets flooded, I can get another number. The fax/message number is then put out as the primary contact number. Faxes and messages are sent using standard encodings by j2 (requires a download to read/listen if using Windows, no additional software if using Linux).

Its worked for years for me -- it avoids the hassle of sharing a home number with a fax machine, or getting a second line installed. Filtering and filing is easy.

Ratboy.

But we have a pre-existing relationship!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fax: 1-866-418-0232

It's on the bottom of FCC.gov. Hopefully it's not just "bait" :)

I can't think of any more fitting way to register my displeasure than by faxing my complaints about this to them. I just hope a long chain of black paper doesn't get stuck to my complaints again. That would suck.

Heh, my captcha for this post is "sniffle" ...

Missed business opportunity?

[merc]

Imagine a facsimile system with a FAX RBL service:

In FRBL mode, the facsimile system will refuse to accept faxes that originate from dialed nodes that block their CLID, in addition, the dialed number would be queried from a realtime RBL and if known to be a facsimile spammer would also refuse to accept the connection.

I'm just not sure how one would handle ISDN CLID forgeries...

i love it! [was] Re:Solution for faxes

[Anonymous Coward]

- thanks for taking the time to post this... before the FTC list, i ran into non-stop callers to my home number... since i was retired, i had a lot of fun calling back to the number repeatedly... if customer being pushed via the unsolicited call was a big corporation, i called their 800 number repeatedly and told them of the connection, why i was calling, and then tried to keep the operators on-line as long as possible with random conversations - lots of fun in the afternoon while i had a beer or two!

- the local unsolicited callers stopped after a few days of random, shell-scripted callbacks (i love my Elsa Microlink modem for Linux, as it supports data, fax, and voice via vgetty)... i filled a few mailboxes and tied up a few lines for hours at a time, but at random intervals... if the calls stopped, so did i (which is only fair)...

- one of the best results was i had was through changing my answering machine message to state that the caller had reached the local office of the Central Intelligence Agency - and to then stand by on the line while the call was being traced... this worked to eliminate nearly all human soliciters (but didn't do anything for the computer calls)...

- the telephone is a wonderful instrument and a helpful device... but when other people use it to intrude rudely into my life i do not hestitate to use it for my defense...

- and gawd help the charity and political callers to my house at the wrong time when i'm in the wrong mood...

Minor correction

[KC7GR]

I meant to say 'SIT generator.' I have no idea why Slashdot's system left out the 'SIT' portion.

Misnomer

[volpe]

Moebius Fax?

A misnomer since the "Moebius" aspect was entirely left out. It's just a loop.

Arm yourself.

[HornWumpus]

Then learn to shoot straight. Then learn to hand load.

The second ammendment is the only one left that restrains them at all.

M1 rifles are'nt assualt rifles under any state law (dispite being used in military assaults from WWII to Korea). They're somewhat expensive. But on the upside they appreciate in value and are considered historical relics under the law.

If your poor an unmodified SKS is also not an assault rifle. Not a bad rifle. Just not a particularly good one.

It's nowhere near the point of taking up arms today (dispite your 22 year old perspective). But keeping the option open keeps the bastards worried. That does change their behavior.

Slashdot: U.S. government, 4 corruption, 1 health.

[Futurepower(R)]

There were four stories today on Slashdot about U.S. government corruption, and one about the government functioning as it should:

IRS Leaves Taxpayer Data Largely Unprotected. If the IRS is denied the computer equipment it needs, there is more money for the government corrupters to steal.

Former BSA VP Confirmed as Tech Undersecretary. Another unqualified person is appointed to influence U.S. technology.

This story: FCC Opens Flood Gates for Junk Faxes. "Under the new rules, a junk faxer could visit your website and call that an existing business relationship."

AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA?. The U.S. government conducts more surveillance world-wide and domestically than any agency, ever, in the history of the world.

Today's news from Slashdot about the U.S. government is not all negative:

FTC Levies Fine Against Big-league Spammers.

--
Violence does not promote democracy. It promotes more violence.

I'd think that fax and cell would be similar...

[Slashdot Junky]

I'd think that the FTC policy would consider junk fax and cell telemarking to be similar. It costs money to receive faxes with the paper and ink/toner. I'd say this similar enough to cell phone service that it shouldn't be allowed.

Later.
-Slashdot Junky

I want a MagicPhoneWizard box!!!

[Slugster]

I have seen this problem for a long time, mainly with regular telemarketers on regular phone lines. You can't keep your number "secret", it gets out no matter what you do.

So what I want is a new device: the MagicalPhoneWizard. This device would hook to the one phone line, and then all my home phones would hook to it.
The MagicalPhoneWizard lets me program in a bunch of different code numbers of a few digits each.
What it does is this:
I give out code numbers to people who I want to be able to call me. When somebody calls my house, the MagicalPhoneWizard answers the line "silently", and then asks the caller for their "security code number". If it's someone calling that I gave a security code to, then enter that code and the phones then ring as normal. Or goes to a message machine/service if I have that set up. If they got no correct code to enter, they don't get shit. The phone never even rings or (optionally) their message could be automatically dumped into a special message category if I chose.
And you could do something similar for faxes as well of course.

But the point of the thing is that it lets me "add on" a secret phone-number to the public one that anyone can get ahold of--and I can assign, change and revoke the secret phone numbers as I please. Is this a crazy dream, or does someone already make such a thing?

I don't think it's practical to expect a "unlisted" phone number to remain private anymore. Once upon a time, companies used to say they wouldn't give out customers' phone numbers to anyone; now most companies say that they "allow it to be shared with affiliate companies". Everyplace that calls me now selling crap I don't want and didn't ask for is an "affiliate" of someplace that I did buy something from.
~

New Rules, WTF?

[mosb1000]

The FCC is an enforcement agency, the law is the law. They are changing their mechanism of enforcement (presumably to a more effective one, since most people seem to agree that the DNC list is working for telephone calls). How is that selling out the american public? The poster is clearly a moron.

Moreover, since businesses use faxes a lot more than individuals, wouldn't the evil big business supporting Bush want to increase enforcement? The lack of logic astounds me.

Call Intercept

[dereference]

So what I want is a new device: the MagicalPhoneWizard. This device would hook to the one phone line, and then all my home phones would hook to it. The MagicalPhoneWizard lets me program in a bunch of different code numbers of a few digits each. What it does is this: I give out code numbers to people who I want to be able to call me. When somebody calls my house, the MagicalPhoneWizard answers the line "silently", and then asks the caller for their "security code number"

Ask and ye shall receive: Call Intercept. Mostly, at least; this only works for unidentified calls, meaning where caller ID is unavailable or blocked, but otherwise it does exactly as you suggest.

Just Ditched Ours

[Bilbo]

We had a fax machine at our church, and were constantly getting junk faxes. We can't afford to keep the old machine up, not to mention that the thing was so old we didn't know how much longer we could get supplies for it. So, we just pulled the plug on the machine and cancelled the extra phone line. It's getting to the point where, if someone wants to send us something, they do it by email. The new copier we just got on lease is a multi-function, and doubles as a network printer, so we can send and receive scans. At this point, there isn't any reason to keep the fax going any longer.

Re:What about telegraphs?

[BasharTeg]

This is truly the stupidest post I've ever seen on Slashdot. Are you high? Almost every business, big or small, has a public fax line you retard. And they print that number on business cards, email signatures, the contact page of their website, and everywhere else they put their contact information.

Here are some fax numbers for you:

http://www.ibm.com/contact/us/
http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=mscom
http://www.intel.com/intel/location/USA.htm
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/AboutAMD/0,,51_ 52_3592_712,00.html

Obviously, the "Fortune 100" companies you've worked for were much bigger than these petty little corporations who have publicly available fax numbers. Since I work for a company that sells fax service among other things, I can tell you there are actually just a few (hundred thousand) more businesses out there who publicly publish a fax number.

Feel free to actually go to the websites of a few of the 99 or 100 Fortune 100 companies that you have never and will never work for and see if they have a fax number available online. Ass.

Oh it'll stop..

[StikyPad]

one has to wonder when or even if it is going to stop.

It'll stop in about 2 years, at which point we'll start

• Paying taxes through the nose
• Increasing welfare and housing programs so my neighbor making $19,000 has more spendable income than I do making $35,000
• Shrinking pay and benefits for people who defend(ed) their country (though at least many qualify for the aforementioned welfare)
• Banning guns
• Supporting corrupt unions who take a nontrivial cut of my paycheck
• Increasing minimum wage so everyone's dollars become worth( )less
• Increasing bureaucracy overall

But at least internet regulation will continue to increase...... Save the children!

Personally I hope McCain gets elected, but moderates seem to be the least popular option these days.