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We ignored the signs.
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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Please tell me I’m not the only 90’s kid that air guitars to the 52k dialup.
52k modems where cool but fax machines.... fuck fax machines. If you ever dialed one by accident you know what I mean.
Does anyone still use fax machines?
Lawyers, courts, and insurance companies still do for various legal reasons. It’s deeply irritating.
The Japanese: こんにちは！
I'm from Germany. German bureaucrats love fax machines
That's usually because regulations were made that you have to use a fax, so that's what they still do. I heard that this was because you can correlate phone records to the date and time on the fax to prove who sent it.
Yeah. I guess that checks out.
I bet you could make lots of money introducing them to the copy machines that can also automatically scan and email documents…
Ironically that won't help. Email is unencrypted and you're not allowed to send "sensible data" over it as it would be violating the GDPR.
On the other side you're technically not allowed to use a fax machine for that either as the recipient might forward faxes to an email inbox and that'd be unencrypted.
But nobody talks about fax being unencrypted either... Also the argument for fax is that POTS is a direct connection between two fax machines while the internet wouldn't be and were easier to eavesdrop on. Since everything is SIP nowadays,... But I don't know what they're thinking besides "we've done that for all those years why wouldn't it work now?"
It’s important to note that fax machines aren’t point-to-point either. Your data is still passing through someone else’s switches (probably fewer hops, mind.) and then there’s the physical security on the other end to wonder about.
The last fax I saw was in high school and it was left out for any one to grab documents from. (Well. Inside the school library right near the librarians desk.)(she had a somewhat unearned reputation for being terrifying, so, you’re mileage might carry there.)
My email is encrypted.
I see them in medical environments sometimes. Occasionally simpler than finding some compatible network method that complies with all the privacy requirements to just send screaming screeches direct point to point.
State government agencies often still use faxes.
Or worse, get dialed up yourself by a faxmachine with a wrong number in its memory.
It will try. And try. And try.
And at some point, you will just shut down your phone and hope it is over soon when the remote side finally cancels the unsuccessful sending operation.
Serious headbanging instead on my side!
I'd close my eyes and spin in circles in my desk chair, trying to guess if I could hear the content nearly finish loading.