I currently have a fax number that is widely used by my clients.
Problem is that I get a ton of fax "spam" if you will. I am looking
for the BEST solution to have these faxes forwarded to e-mail, while
keeping my existing fax number since that is the one everyone knows
and uses.
I am somewhat familiar with e-fax, but they can not re-use my existing
number, plus you have to pay for outgoing faxes. I have seen where I
can have a forward feature put on my fax line that would forward to an
e-fax number, and I would still be able to use my fax machine for
outgoing faxes (at least that is how I understand it).
Because of the number of "spam" faxes I receive via fax, I have to
replace my toner about every other week. As you can imagine this is a
very high expense for me, so I thought if I could have them sent to
e-mail then i could print the ones I want to keep and delete the
trash.
Does anyone have any better solutions than this. Someone mentioned a
Microsoft Fax Software, but I did not have any luck finding anything
out about it, so therefore I know nothing about it. Please let me
know if there is a better alternative solution.
Thanks,
ju
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why don't you consider forwarding all
of it, _everything_, to email, then using one of the several programs
available for sorting out spam look at it and those things that are
_not_ spam have them automatically sent on to your clients through an
outbound email to fax thing. Sometimes, when things get as
overwhelming as spam has become, you have to work things in the
reverse fashion. I think it would be a lot cheaper than trying to take
it all and try to do it as you are talking about.
Take email for example: Instead of battling it all, what would happen
if everyone just used a 'white list' of what they would accept and
bashed _everything else_. Here, the 'internet postage; scheme might
work okay: To get on my 'white list' you send me some nominal amount
of 'internet postage' (off hand, let's say 5 cents), if I approve you
for my white list I return your nickle and add your email to the white
list. As of some certain day, everything else is blacklisted. If I do
not want you on my list, then I keep your nickle and ignore you. Stuff
that is not on the white list just gets automatically smashed and
destroyed. Before long, so-called 'public email' would just be
spammers (anyone who did not send a nickle one time, with a request to
be added. That way we do not need filters, and we do not need to try
and trace it back, etc. The presumption is that _all is spam_ except
the occassional good, valid pieces of email, as per the white
lists. Spammers would not send the nickle to start with, and although
valid users would send it one time to be validated on the white list,
they'd soon get their nickle returned. Maybe we should just write off
email as any sort of useful tool; force the spammers (and YOU have to
_prove_ you are not a spammer by sending that first nickle with _no
guarentee_ you would get it back from anyone) to play it our way.
Instead of trying to sort through it all, let's just asume it is all
spam, and start from scratch. Newcomers late to the initial
'enrollment' period would have to begin their 'email experience' by
sending a nickle to the person they wish to white list them. To get
that nickle to me, the newcomers (once we have gone entirely to a
white list system) would have to have a 'flag' on their email that
first time with some sort of sensible email saying 'I want to be on
your white list', otherwise of course they'd be killed like all email,
presumed to be spam, since that is how we now define email. For almost
all of us, it would be far easier to work with a handful of regular
correspondents than a few thousand items to sort through each day,
most or all of which is spam anyway. PAT]
Jeremy (payday215@aol.com)