While most of us can't remember the last time we use one the fax is still going strong on Japan

clicky

I used to fax the daily reports from the rig before we got internet access. But that was years ago, something like the early 2000's.

Several of my customers take the majority of their orders by fax. Seems rather "quaint" to me, but people have their reasons. One reason is orders that need to be physically signed with a pen. Although a fax is just as easy to doctor as an email, people trust them more.

Can't they sign, scan, email, print?

Most people would find it easier to sign and fax, and as I say people trust a fax more than an emailed document.

I believe, at least in the UK, an email even with the image of a signature attached does not qualify as a 'legal document', whereas a fax does for the archaic reason that it's a piece of paper with a signature on it, even if the piece of paper itself wasn't signed - it's considered as 'legally sound' as a photocopy. Even though a digitally signed email can be provably shown to have originated from it's sender, where as a fax can't.

Jon

We have to fax certain things eg urgent referrals. Otherwise they get posted and snail mail takes too long when referring cancer patients.

I can't remember exactly how long ago it was, but one of my customers still had a telex machine. It was for legal documents where the sender had to be authenticated.

We send so many time-sensitive documents off that scanning and emailing them would actually waste more time

Depends on how it was signed, services like EchoSign http://www.echosign.com/ seem to be good enough for companies like BT and a few of our clients

Thinking back to when I had to go to the passport office for my second passport. They wouldn't accept a printout of an emailed pdf, but they would accept a fax of the same ducument.

Not legally, at least not here in Germany. A signed fax is a legal document, a PDF scan of the signed original is not a legal document.

They are trying to change the law here, that if you sign the PDF with a digital signature (E.g. Verisign), then it would be a legal document, but that is an expensive route to take.

For our trusted customers, we accept scanned copies, but for new customers or those that have a poor payment history, they have to mail or fax their confirmations through to us.

Also, a large number of our customers don't have e-mail addresses.

Government departments won't accept a faxed signature (or, in a lot of cases, photocopies full stop), they require an original signature. E-mail is completely out of the question.

Both can be easily tampered with though, and in ways that would be hard to detect on receipt. Unless you require the electronic communication to be in advance of the original paper copy, how will you know that the faxed/emailed document is verifiable?

Maybe, but the courts decided 2 decades ago, that a fax is a legal document. They haven't yet recognised any form of electronic document transfer.