Fax Machines - Who uses them?

There are a great many people who find a use for the good ‘ole fax machine.

The average fax user is anybody who is employed at an office, usually in an administration role. From secretarial staff to PA’s, from managers to directors, it’s not just the admin assistants who are the potential users of a fax machine.

Additionally, fax machines will also find a use in people who have a physical impairment or disability, especially those who have hearing difficulties. A fax machine gives them the capability to use the phone line, sending pictures and written images in place of spoken conversation, empowering those users with a equal level of communication abilities, on the same footing as every other person.

One trend that has come forward over the previous decade has been to use the fax machine in marketing, sending out fax messages to numbers where there might be some interest in a service or product that the marketeer is promoting.

Unfortunately, as well as this trend in marketing, a tendency to use fax devices to send spam had emerged. Like the e-mail versions that the majority of us are all too familiar with, fax spam is the act of sending unsolicited fax broadcasts in bulk.

As such, the recipients of these spam faxes usually find that they are snowed under with messages that they are forced to pay for in ink and paper costs.

There is not a lot that can be done to stop a fax sender if they do not wish to abide with etiquette and, in some cases, the law. For example, placing the fax sending facilities outside the country can, in most cases, make redundant the rules to shield businesses from unwanted direct marketing of this type.