Irritating Fax Autodialers...

[MultimediaMan]

Gurm...a Cease and Desist or a quick call to your Phone Company will clear things up in short order. Fax-abuse laws were first passed at the Federal level in 1989; Specifically, all FAXes must have an address and phone number on the cover sheet or in the header pf the message.

I use SmithMicro's HotFax Message Center 5.05: all anonymous caller IDs are refused be they Faxes or Voice attempts.

[Gurm]

The problem is that much of the country is still in an "unknown call" fax zone.

The phone company offered quickly to add "blocked call" refusal. The problem is that all these calls weren't "blocked" but "unknown". LOTS of people are "unknown" to the caller ID system. My mom calls me sometimes and gets an "unknown".

The phone company said they couldn't help me at all. Period. Full stop. They can't selectively block calls, they said. I think they're full of it, myself.

- Gurm

[MultimediaMan]

Do the Faxes have origination numbers? (i.e. written on the headers of the FAX?)

If no, the FBI would like you to take some of your time and talk to them.

[Gurm]

You're assuming that I've got a fax machine hooked up.

- Gurm

P.S. It seems to have stopped since I faxed them a threatening note.

[Nowhere]

btw, is there a simple, free, non-bloated little software to play with fax a little? I must try this someday

[Sethos]

Hey Gurm, what's the ph #? being that it's the weekend and a local call for me...i'd have fun wasting some toner...theirs of course

~Sethos

[UtwigMU]

I had one on some shareware that came with computer magazine CD long time ago.

Send and received a couple of faxes succesfully.

Google, c-net, tucows...

It's built into Win2k or XP, however I'm on ISDN and analog ISA = no worky on ISDN line.

[Nowhere]

are you sue Utwig that, even while using second analog modem, you can't send faxes? Usually there is some "fallback" mathod...

For example, I have here HiS (ericcson product, it looks like some sort of slow and relatively cheap dsl connected via serial: 115 kb/s in&out, 70 kb/s when phone is in use; sends all data in digitall form , including voice which is coded the same way as in ISDN, besides data also - almost identical protocol as in ISDN afaik, but it's not dialup; I can use old analog phone (and wires), and of course there are none of the ISDN "GSMish" functions). And while I can't send faxes via HiS terminal, I can connect to the line old modem and it'll work from what I know - only that data transfer while sending fax will be 70 kb/s.

btw Utwig, did you noticed that recently was -1 anniversary of something? we should've been celebrating

[az]

ISDN uses the same frequency band analog POTS uses (plus a bit more), so it's mutually exclusive. There are ISDN faxes and fax software, though.

AZ

[Nowhere]

HiS also uses practically whole available frequency - it's imposiible to transmit digital data and voice thruogh the line at the same time (voice is coded to digital form, the fax transmission also would be).
otoh it's little different from ISDN, because for example I can disconnect the terminal (causing internet acces to stop) and the whole line falls back to analog mode then...

[az]

Yes, looks like some form of ISDN, or something close to that.

AZ

[Nowhere]

when it comes to protocols it uses, yes, it's very similiar afaik, but the whole structure is very much like typical dsl (with one little difference that it doesn't have ethernet port, only serial, like usual external modem).
I've menaged to find some information about it in English (most are in Polish, it seems that HiS is very specyfic for Poland - Ericsson even moved the production from New Zealand here - although I have terminal from the other side of the globe )