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It's also very popular in Germany, for three simple reasons: 1. It is a written form, so you can sign things with a pen before faxing it. It functions like a s

It's also very popular in Germany, for three simple reasons: 1. It is a written form, so you can sign things with a pen before faxing it. It functions like a scanned PDF. 2. You don't get spam like with email because the sender has to pay to reach you. 3. You get a confirmation that your document was received. And unlike email read receipts, those confirmations are honest because spam is not an issue.

mbg721 3y ago
In the US there always was occasional fax spam. I think I saw one maybe 5 years ago.
- unwind 3y ago
  The US is known for having free local landline calls, something that as far as I know is not very common globally.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Remember the sheet fed by roller fax machines? Urban legend says that if you fed a piece of black construction paper into the sending machine and then tape the ends together after it had pulled through enough to do so would cause the receiving end to run out of toner and/or paper. Prank fax calls instead of SPAM.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Fax spam used to be a problem many years back (and some famous "DoS" attacks of faxing someone a completely black piece of paper on a loop to use up all their ink). Is that no longer the case? My guess in the US it's no longer a problem just because so few people use faxes anymore, but don't know about the rest of the world.
vel0city 3y ago
Fax spam can be a thing. An old fax number at my office would get 1-2 spam faxes a week for a while. Often related to some kind of vacation membership scam.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xienze 3y ago
You’re pitching email as the only viable alternative to a fax. It’s not, you can use something like Docusign instead.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Fax spam is absolutely a thing. 10 to 20 years ago or so, we had to use the software that comes with a brother MFC printer to digitally save the faxes because 99% was spam and it was wasting paper and toner.
- mattl 3y ago
  One of my first jobs in the 90s was making fax software so my boss could send a newsletter to all of our customers who all had fax and virtually none had email or even internet access. One of the first things I worked on was getting our own virtual ISP by white labeling our ISP’s services.
awiesenhofer 3y ago
These are all nice features but not the reason why faxes are still so popular in Germany. Its because Germany is years (some say decades) behind on digitizing the country and they need those fax machines to get anything done at all...
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  I would agree with you if I knew a technology that solved the same pain points as fax. Email is not the solution because you need to drop large amounts of incoming emails just because of spam. That means you can never rely on an email with an important document arriving. Snail mail is ... well ... slow. But it does arrive reliably and it does offer honest delivery tracking. As the example use case, let's go with me asking a potential supplier if they can provide a specific component. Which technology would an ideally digitized country use?
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Email? Or check the supplier catalogue online. Are you really sending a fax for that? Re : signatures. All my recent contracts have been sign with DocuSign. That’s fine
  - benatkin 3y ago
    DocuSign and alternatives.
  - krzyk 3y ago
    Well, any other country (except Japan) has found a way. I don't recall when I had seen a fax machine in real life, there was one in the office 10 years ago, but it was one machine for about 1 thousand people. Sample solution is a website on which you send "email" (not real one, but the side shows it as such) - this way you can communicate with goverment (local and country level) in Poland. I wonder, how do people in Germany do taxes? They fax them?
    - Tainnor 3y ago
      > I wonder, how do people in Germany do taxes? They fax them? Many (most?) private households don't have a fax machine. There are several ways of submitting your taxes (e.g. mailing them in), but there's also the Elster app which makes this process fully digital: https://www.elster.de/eportal/start https://www.elster.de/eportal/start Plus various (mostly paid) third-party tools. It's also worth noting that filling out a tax report is optional for most(?) people that aren't self-employed, because taxes are automatically deducted from your salary. You're advised to fill them out, though, as usually you can get some money back (e.g. by deducting money for your commute and other things).
_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
I run a smallish business in Germany (20+ employees) and we actually do have a fax machine. However, I wouldn’t say it is used very often. The only thing I remember it was as used in the last year was for government grant which expected the signed quarterly time sheets to be faxed. So I think we used the fax machine 4 times last year. This probably still infinitely more than a lot of other countries, but I would say still very much an exception and not the norm. I think doctors still use them fairly frequently but I don’t have much insides into that.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> You don't get spam I recall 4chan faxing black pages taped together in an infinite loop to the church of Scientology.
ksec 3y ago
Exactly. And is why I like Fax, an extreme minority on HN. I only wish Fax could be of much higher resolution and much faster. But for now, it gets the job done. Of course the 2nd Point, SPAM cost may not be the same in every country. There are also Unicode or Character / Information representation problems. We can write it, but as may not be able to input it within the computer system, due to CJK / Unicode / System implementation mismatch etc... And Fax is still used in many industries outside of silicon valley. Especially those in Global Logistics and Supple Chains.

mbg721 3y ago

In the US there always was occasional fax spam. I think I saw one maybe 5 years ago.

unwind 3y ago
The US is known for having free local landline calls, something that as far as I know is not very common globally.
dylan604 3y ago
Remember the sheet fed by roller fax machines? Urban legend says that if you fed a piece of black construction paper into the sending machine and then tape the ends together after it had pulled through enough to do so would cause the receiving end to run out of toner and/or paper. Prank fax calls instead of SPAM.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Fax spam used to be a problem many years back (and some famous "DoS" attacks of faxing someone a completely black piece of paper on a loop to use up all their ink). Is that no longer the case? My guess in the US it's no longer a problem just because so few people use faxes anymore, but don't know about the rest of the world.

vel0city 3y ago

Fax spam can be a thing. An old fax number at my office would get 1-2 spam faxes a week for a while. Often related to some kind of vacation membership scam.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xienze 3y ago

You’re pitching email as the only viable alternative to a fax. It’s not, you can use something like Docusign instead.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

Fax spam is absolutely a thing. 10 to 20 years ago or so, we had to use the software that comes with a brother MFC printer to digitally save the faxes because 99% was spam and it was wasting paper and toner.

mattl 3y ago
One of my first jobs in the 90s was making fax software so my boss could send a newsletter to all of our customers who all had fax and virtually none had email or even internet access. One of the first things I worked on was getting our own virtual ISP by white labeling our ISP’s services.

awiesenhofer 3y ago

These are all nice features but not the reason why faxes are still so popular in Germany. Its because Germany is years (some say decades) behind on digitizing the country and they need those fax machines to get anything done at all...

fxtentacle 3y ago
I would agree with you if I knew a technology that solved the same pain points as fax. Email is not the solution because you need to drop large amounts of incoming emails just because of spam. That means you can never rely on an email with an important document arriving. Snail mail is ... well ... slow. But it does arrive reliably and it does offer honest delivery tracking. As the example use case, let's go with me asking a potential supplier if they can provide a specific component. Which technology would an ideally digitized country use?
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Email? Or check the supplier catalogue online. Are you really sending a fax for that? Re : signatures. All my recent contracts have been sign with DocuSign. That’s fine
- benatkin 3y ago
  DocuSign and alternatives.
- krzyk 3y ago
  Well, any other country (except Japan) has found a way. I don't recall when I had seen a fax machine in real life, there was one in the office 10 years ago, but it was one machine for about 1 thousand people. Sample solution is a website on which you send "email" (not real one, but the side shows it as such) - this way you can communicate with goverment (local and country level) in Poland. I wonder, how do people in Germany do taxes? They fax them?
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    > I wonder, how do people in Germany do taxes? They fax them? Many (most?) private households don't have a fax machine. There are several ways of submitting your taxes (e.g. mailing them in), but there's also the Elster app which makes this process fully digital: https://www.elster.de/eportal/start https://www.elster.de/eportal/start Plus various (mostly paid) third-party tools. It's also worth noting that filling out a tax report is optional for most(?) people that aren't self-employed, because taxes are automatically deducted from your salary. You're advised to fill them out, though, as usually you can get some money back (e.g. by deducting money for your commute and other things).

_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago

I run a smallish business in Germany (20+ employees) and we actually do have a fax machine. However, I wouldn’t say it is used very often. The only thing I remember it was as used in the last year was for government grant which expected the signed quarterly time sheets to be faxed. So I think we used the fax machine 4 times last year. This probably still infinitely more than a lot of other countries, but I would say still very much an exception and not the norm. I think doctors still use them fairly frequently but I don’t have much insides into that.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> You don't get spam I recall 4chan faxing black pages taped together in an infinite loop to the church of Scientology.

ksec 3y ago

Exactly. And is why I like Fax, an extreme minority on HN. I only wish Fax could be of much higher resolution and much faster. But for now, it gets the job done. Of course the 2nd Point, SPAM cost may not be the same in every country. There are also Unicode or Character / Information representation problems. We can write it, but as may not be able to input it within the computer system, due to CJK / Unicode / System implementation mismatch etc... And Fax is still used in many industries outside of silicon valley. Especially those in Global Logistics and Supple Chains.