Paul wrote:
>
>> Email and the modern scanner has made the FAX
>> a dinosaur.
>
>You must not spend much time in the business world. I recently had
>to manage a major project for a world wide banking conglomerate
>that everyone knows by name, and everything "important" was done
>using FAX. Absolutely nothing sensitive could be transmitted via
>email, encrypted or otherwise.
>
>I also recently went through a credit card dispute after being
>swindled on a Christmas present purchase (bastards!). Every scrap
>of paper and every statement I made had to be faxed. They wouldn't
>even give me an email address, or even surf to the web site I built
>that had everything nicely organized, documented, and explained in
>detail. A web site hosted tight in my own living room no less.
>
>I also do quite a bit of work for a largish law firm dealing
>primarily with international property and copyright law. They've
>gone largely paperless internally, but I'd estimate over 90% of
>their external (non-hardcopy) correspondence is still FAX. They
>actually decrypt archived documents before transmission and use a
>networked Xerox "all in one" to FAX documents when it would
>actually be *easier* to email them if their clients would only put
>in place a free server and exchange keys properly. The whole thing
>could be done transparently, and documents would be delivered
>directly to the "addressee" rather than routed through whoever
>happens to "check the FAX machine" that hour. ;-)
>
>FAX dead? Not from where I sit it isn't. I can only guess at why
>it's so, but if I had to my best would be that crypto is a "black
>box" and FAX feels more "natural". FAX is (allegedly) a direct
>transmission too, while everyone seems to have at least some small,
>if sometimes alarmist, grasp of how "evil" email can be because it's
>routed through every Tom, Dick, and Jane server on the planet. FAX
>transmissions are simply trusted more than email and crypto, and
>oddly enough, for some valid reasons.
Granted, that even if many faxes are routed through Internet, the perception that it is not worthwhile to intercept and alter them prevents much abuse.