Email Vs. Fax: The Security Wars

The trusty old fax machine is not going anywhere for a while, as plenty of industries consider it a more secure alternative than email for sensitive documents.

When was the last time you sent a fax? Chances are it’s been a while. The paperless office is well on its way to becoming a reality, as it’s becoming increasingly feasible to run your daily admin while keeping documents exclusively in electronic form. Even basic PDF readers will let you sign documents by creating a signature (having placed a slip of paper in front of the computer camera) meaning there’s no need to bother with the hassle of printing, signing and then scanning or faxing the document back.
If you’re among those who assume the fax machine is well on its way to the digital history books, you may be surprised to hear that faxing remains a lot more popular than technological advancement may suggest. OrderSnapp, the US takeaway food service, may take most of its customer orders via a handy smartphone app, but up to 40% of the restaurants receiving these orders prefer to have them come in via fax. “A lot of the smaller, family-owned or individually owned restaurants […] still don’t have internet access,” OrderSnapp president Ron Resnick told ‘FastCompany’. And even amongst those who have the internet, Resnick has found that many are uncomfortable with receiving messages on their phones or tablets, simply preferring to see their orders come in on old-fashioned paper.
Having said that, you’d be sorely mistaken if you think it’s just internet-refuseniks at family restaurants who like to stick to paper. Faxing remains popular in a host of industries: law firms, financial groups, medical providers, and public offices will all default to fax occasionally, perceiving it as a more secure method for sending sensitive documents than using email. Case in point: the UK’s Inland Revenue service will let you submit your tax return online, but if you need an official physical copy you have two choices: wait two weeks to receive it in the post, or get it by fax.
Fraud-conscious companies are aware that even if the law firm encrypts its emails, the transmission won’t be secure unless the recipient does this too. But the same can be true for fax machines, meaning this insistence on faxing can feel mighty frustrating when you’re used to instant electronic communication. After all, if you’re in need of a document which you can’t wait to receive in the post, scrambling around to find a fax machine is probably the last thing you need. The whole thing can get pretty farcical too. For example, a bank will send you a formal mortgage statement in the post or via fax only, except they will only fax it to your local branch, where you have to show up during work hours to collect it with ID. Is this more secure than email? Yes – until you remember you’re in a hurry, so you scan and email that document the moment you get your hands on it.
There’s a strong need for an instant data transfer platform that is secure enough to satisfy even tax authorities and banks. While clunky old paper will remain a feature  a while longer, luckily there’s a number of companies which have stepped up to bridge the gap between the old and new technologies. Phaxio is one of these companies who realise that the app-generation are hungry for a way around this clunky mess, so they’ve introduced a solution to the faxing problem. Phaxio allows anyone to send and receive a fax without having to have a fax machine on a pay-as-you-go basis. Phaxio does this by acting as a middleman: email them the document you want faxed and they’ll take care of it. They will then deliver the faxes you get in return electronically. Twilio operates on a similar principle: placing automatic calls on behalf of companies to verify orders, and enabling them to communicate seamlessly with customers via SMS.
Then there’s VoxScience, which does one of the most valuable jobs of all: listening to all your voicemails, transcribing them and sending them to you as an email or SMS. This is especially interesting when looking at VoxScience’s office product, as receiving your office phone’s voice messages on email allows you to forward them to colleagues, or to easily search through them at a later point. This is particularly clever when considering how anything agreed verbally has to be repeated in an email to ensure there’s a record of it.