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American check use has been dwindling for decades. It was the elephant in the room when I worked for a transaction risk management firm based on checks in the m
by ubermonkey 5y ago
American check use has been dwindling for decades. It was the elephant in the room when I worked for a transaction risk management firm based on checks in the mid-90s, even. Back then, even as an employee of TeleCheck, the ONLY time I used a paper check at point of sale was my dry cleaner (because she didn't take credit cards and I rarely had much cash only).
Mailed checks -- rent, utilities, etc -- have held on longer, but it's probably been 10 years since I even OWNED checks. My wife has some, because until recently it was the most convenient way to pay her student loans, so if for some reason we needed a check we'd just have her deal with it.
I'm almost 52, and our approach here is pretty normal. All our utilities are paid online. I guess taxes are the only thing we still need a check for.
So, yeah, we shake our heads a fax machines, and the people doing so are also shaking their heads at checks, too.
The notion that fax is somehow safer or more secure than email is utterly laughable, and has been for 20 years. A huge chunk of corporate fax numbers are just gateways to a system that routes a PDF to email. It's literally the same thing. And if it's not, fax is WORSE since it relies on the physical security of the fax machine.
- froh 5y agoGood I'm glad to hear that cheques are used less now. Regarding security, the logic/claim is that the long distance transport between the organizations is "safe" via phone. The in-house processing on the recipients last mile is their security problem. And the pdf to fax in-house infrastructure "is safe, IT said". That public internet, dark and sinister, in between the two, is not to be trusted, though. That's the legislatures position over here.
- ubermonkey 5y agoIt's fun they seem to think fax travels over a different network than email.
- themadturk 5y agoWell, it depends, doesn't it? If you have plain old phone service on either end, that's not the same network -- which is possibly the case with small, older companies and individuals. Not everything is VOIP.
- rascul 5y agoI've been led to believe that many telecoms use voip on the backend and your pots phone call is actually going over the internet. I don't know how much of that is true.
- zinekeller 5y agoIt's definitely being routed over fibers, sure, but while faxes in theory can routed over the internet (T.38, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.38 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.38, which what Google Fiber is using https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6377387 https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6377387), in most POTS cases it's still done outside internet because of latency and compatibility concerns (unlike VoIP that human perception can mask small jitters), it's just transformed into light and back for long-distance calls (or if the machine at the end uses EPON T.38).