Anyone still using FAX?

Ouch. From there to a hardcore case of ID theft would only be a short path. Faxes have a high probability of carrying sensitive and marketable information for crooks. It would be like leaving a Ferrari on a street downtown, with the keys in it.

Pretty weird, considering the normal location of the carpal tunnel ;-)

...Jim Thompson

YourISP.Com

Not likely. Sensitive stuff I always send via FedEx. I used to even FedEx cash to my daughters when they were in college (the f...ing bank wanted to impose a wire charge, on both ends).

Stuff that I can afford to lose, I send USPS ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Yes, but your packets will be shuffled in with thousands of other packets simultaneously, and while one can put together a complete stream by reassembling all the pieces, in practice unless someone is specifically targeting *you*, the likelihood of your particular PDF being snooped is pretty slim, IMO. I mean, I think the "threat level" there is comparable to that of someone just tapping a few thousand voice calls simultaneously at some appropriate network junction and then decoding any FAXes that happen to be sent while they're listening.

Well, yeah, ok, joint pain then. Nerve channels exist everywhere and once they hurt it doesn't want to stop anymore.

If someone manages to reroute only the packets to one particular destination it can probably be pieced together automagically. So they'd keep doing that until something marketable pops up. Like something with a social security number in there.

Agreed, but it takes a lot of computing resources to monitor any significant fraction of the millions of connections that go through any given Internet router in a given day... and of course requires access to that network in the first place. Hence my belief that you're talking about a scheme probably not much more likely than someone monitoring a bunch of phone lines and decoding any FAXes that go through: Both require access to restricted resources (a large Internet switching center vs. a large Telco switching benter), both go through multiple "hops" to get from source to destination, neither is encrypted, and many, many are multiplexed together simultaneously.

Can't you just encrypt the PDF before sending, since PDF file-type is supported directly.

Looks pretty good to me... nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than what I pay for a dedicated line, plus most everything I send is long distance.

...Jim Thompson

pretty

Joerg, You're paranoid. Calm down and daisy-chain a bunch of extension cords ;-)

...Jim Thompson

With the Internet you never really know which countries stuff goes through and as we all know there are certain countries where the restricted access is, ahem, less restrictive. A little cash under the table makes things accessible. It isn't a coincidence that a large portion of grand style ID theft is ultimately tracked back to certain regions of the world. In contrast, a telco knows how stuff is routed and (usually) avoid such hot paths.

I have LD for 2c a minute via a 1010 number and 3c a minute via a phone card. Oh, and between 0.5c/min and 2c/min for the foreign countries I call the most. All via ole Missy Bell's lines. Heck, it's so low that I've stopped billing phone charges a long time ago. Unless it's into a price-gouging monopoly country or overseas mobile and the total became large.

pretty

of

No, I'm not too paranoid about it. OTOH friends got scoped out. And cleaned out :-(

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

My wife only uses the "receive" feature, so I don't really know, but I suspect not: OneSuite has to be able to turn whatever files you send them into an image in order to FAX it, and they'd need the decryption key to do that... which, AFAIK, isn't a function they support (e.g., entering a key on their web site).

OneSuite is pretty basic service, but I've been happy with them for something like 5 years now -- I first heard of them back in grad school from the Indian students, who used it to dial back home and had found their rates to be among the cheapest! My mother was busily working on her semi-retirement plans off in New Zealand at the time (she's now a "permanent resident" and will become a "citizen" later this year, I believe... nice place, although probably too many leftist liberal weenies for your tastes, Jim :-) ), and hence I was looking for cheap international calling plans as well.

---Joel

Maybe I'll find out in the coming year... I have a former Canadian client who has relocated his company to New Zealand.

...Jim Thompson

Hi Joerg,

Well, if you're connecting a site within the continental U.S. to another site within the continental U.S., the likelihood that your data goes anywhere other than... the U.S. and perhaps Canada is pretty vanishingly small.

I'd agree that if you'e sending FAXes-via-the-Internet to "certain" foreign countries, there's a somewhat larger threat potential. (Although the likelihood that there's a human mole sitting next to the FAX machine at your recipient's place of business also goes up correspondingly as well...)

Most ID theft these days seems to be when someone takes home an entire unencrypted memory stick or laptop full of personally identifiable information to work on... and has it stolen. In the local paper a few weeks back there was a case where a disabled 10-year-old kid got a notice from Social Security that he wouldn't be getting SS anymore because tax records showed he's now making >$30k/year! ...turns out someone down in Texas had stolen the kid's SSN and was using it to obtain employment. The parents think their data was obtained when Providence Health Care up in Portland -- that provided some of the kid's treatment -- lost 365,000 files when some backup tapes were stolen from an employee's car back in 2005. (My wife and I had health insurance through Providence at the time too, unfortunately. :-( Heck, she had her car radio stolen twice while working there, with her car parked in their parking lot!)

---Joel

Looks like 0.5c/min unless you call a mobile there:

This is the service we are using but AFAIK it's restricted to Californian AT&T or Verizon customers. Don't know whether they've got something for Oregonians. Can't hurt to ask.

This is another reason why I won't drop the land line anytime soon. I don't think it is possible to land such deals using a cell carrier. The audio quality of calls to Europe is superb, almost as if the other party was next door.

If nothing pans out check the international phone card that Costco offers. Then there is Skype but I have not used that myself (yet).

Isn't a landline required for any of the 10xxxxx services though?

Ah, apparently so.

It's also slightly sleazy that those 1019898 guys charge you a $0.10 connection few, but that's cheap enough these days. Thanks for the link.

---Joel

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I'm sure you'll enjoy visiting, I just suspect you wouldn't want to live there.

Heck, they're a country where legally you're not allowed to work on your own home wiring if you're not a licensed electrician (or "electrics," as they call it)! ...although these days many people do anyway, of course.

But it's a beautiful place, and there's lots of really good, inexpensive food, and in general a nice, casual, polite atmosphere.

---Joel

The problem is the people (customers) who insist on sending you that stuff.

Outgoing faxes are a trivial problem. Either get a fax modem and use an existing voice line. Or use an e-mail to fax service. Better yet, just default to e-mailing PDF's until they complain. Some will, some will get weaned off of faxes and then you've reduced the size of your problem.

Its the incoming stuff that's a nuisance. And that's not easy to shut down with some people. The fax to e-mail services involve some latency. Or you've got to tie up a phone line.