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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."
Can we put the FCC's FAX number on the junk fax list?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Scroll down a bit, and a bit more, and a bit more... and then a bit more... and then some more... and some more...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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?
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...
Insert Sig Here
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.)
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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?
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.
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.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The problem isn't this president; the problem is the last 38 or so.
Another one bites the dust
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.
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.
From now on, I buy only Intel.
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.
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.
Elsewhere on slashdot: the government fined some major spammers. Crazy world.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
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?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
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)?
"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
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
www.wavefront-av.com
what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?
The president getting a BJ.
Get eFax...comes to my inbox. No wasted paper, no 2:00 AM ringing fax machine.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
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.
Well, there is the fact that there's only 209 more days until election day . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
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.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
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...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.