"Curse You FoIP"

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Introduction and overview: "Faxing for fun and profit"
Main Points:
      1. A look at the technology
      2. The faxes themselves and the companies involved:
           the advertisers and those that do the faxing
      3. Legality
           and copy of the actual law passed in July 2005
      4. Effect of the faxes
      5. What Can be done
Conclusion
A Reply from a faxer.
Glossary and
          Resource Links and Related articles

"Faxing for fun and profit"

      If you have a FAX machine, you have most probably seen them.
      Some people call them commercials, fax spam or ads, broadcast messages, other people call them a criminal act. In reality they are all of the above.
      They used to be a bare trickle most of the time. An ad for cel phones, maybe a cruise special. The occasional 'hot stock tip'. And so on.
      Then a sea change in technology opened the floodgates and has swamped most fax machines with sometimes dozens of them in a row. And furthermore, this change in the technology has allowed those doing the sending to completely hide their identity so the number they use to call out on cannot be traced so they will not suffer the same fate as their infamous predecessors. Protus IP Solutions has been repeatedly sued. American Blast went bankrupt. And fax.com appears to be out of business after they have repeatedly changed their name (Access Sales Inc. was one incarnation), but not their business practices, in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the law. At least one group has moved to the Caribbean where the US has no say whatsoever, yet using new technology they can still reach 'customers' in the USA.
      But the Big Two (Protus and fax.com) while they were the largest, one estimate put that just Protus and fax.com generated somewhere on the order of eighty percent of all US junk faxes, also seem to have fallen the hardest. And, as is the way of things, once they turned out the lights another firm, Vision Labs, began pumping them out at about the same rate. Vision Labs (see reply below ) has since come under the microscope of Florida regulators and may be in for the same fate.
      However. Smaller firms have set up shop, and with the new technology, they don't need page after page of what used to be called WATS lines to do what they do. And with this new technology, they can hit just as many fax machines as their older brethren, at a fraction of the expense per transmission, and after the deed is done, not worry for one moment about their actions being tracked and litigation or prosecution coming their way from it.
      Now, just to be fair, we will mention right up front that there are businesses that see this practice as a legitimate business operation, claim they NEED to do it, and say they are doing it responsibly and they will remove your number from their database IF you ask them to. OK, there are. And during the research for this article this writer DID run into exactly two of them. For the record... for most of this report we are NOT talking about those responsible businesses who see faxing as a business tool and whom use it responsibly. By the working definition under the law below, they are NOT the lawbreakers we're talking about.

      This paper will look at the famous five 'W's (who, what, when, where, why and how) of fax spamming and what "We the People" can do about it.

1. the TECHNOLOGY

the good old days
      The way it used to be done was rather simple and straightforward.
      Somewhere late at night in Las Vegas, to pick on one of the favorite places for these types of firms to operate, there was an actual office style fax machine plugged into a long distance enabled phone line. Somebody working for minimum wage would actually program an entire series of phone numbers into the machine, some broadcast capable fax machines would hold in excess of two hundred phone numbers without expansion, then they would scan the outbound ad and push a green button. The machine would begin dialing and sending. Then they would move onto another machine, on another line, and repeat the process.
      The reason they waited until the middle of the night was simple, very few legitimate transmissions were going out, so there was less of a chance of the machine doing the dialing hitting a busy signal and getting stuck in a loop.
      With a script of a few thousand numbers being fed into maybe a dozen machines the 'direct advertiser' could hit a limited number of 'customers' in a given period. The cost of doing business, besides the labor of the button pusher, was the long distance calls, running at a few cents per transmitted ad, and the electricity to make it all work. Those who benefited from the advertising- that assortment of cruise brokers, stock market operators, training firms, and even sunglass sellers- could expect a reasonable rate of return on investment.
      When the heat came down, if it ever did, the fax business could pull up stakes and move to Los Angeles on fairly short notice. One call to Pacific Bell, and they were back in business.

today
      It is called Fax over Internet Protocol, FoIP.
      It began as a simple Windows Office feature where any computer with a network or internet connection could transmit a fax to another computer or fax machine without a piece of paper ever being printed in the sending office. It has grown up.
      You can think of FoIP as Voice over Internet Protocol's wayward cousin. VoIP places what is usually thought of as a telephone call over the network more often associated with emails and web surfing to another person either in the same building or halfway around the world. Most of the time you will never know the difference between a standard analog to analog phone call as when you used to call your grandmother from home. The quality is fair to good, and you can even tell that the other person isn't really paying attention to what you are saying by their inflection and tone.
      The new standards for digital sampling codecs used to make a VoIP call are also very favorable to Fax machines who are less tolerant of error and signal (packet) loss than voice service. With a person to person call, if some of the conversation is lost, you simply ask the person to repeat what they said, a fax machine can't do that, and in response to the interruption it drops the call.

      With FoIP operating over a broadband internet connection from the new generation of PC's and servers, none of the limitations in the previous generation of fax spammers are a factor. Individual long distance calls are all but free over the Net. It is conceivable that the computer could have a working list of every known fax machine in North America and still have room on board for pictures of the spammer's last vacation. The spammer doesn't even have to pay some dropout minimum wage to push the green button, they can program the unit to kick off every night at nine o'clock and cook through until about six the next morning and forget about it. Using desktop publishing they can even customize the outgoing message to suit a variety of advertisers with just a few clicks of the mouse. By programming the dialing software to spoof the number captured by the phone company as the originator of the call, and even the IP address if you want to, which can be passed on to the receiver's fax machine or fax server they can make the fax seem like its coming from anybody they want, including Satan himself with the number 666-666-6666, or nobody at all by leaving it blank.
      See related article Caller ID can Lie to You.
      Consequently the only way the 'heat can come down' is if somebody tracks down the firm doing the advertising and under threat of a nasty lawsuit they give up the name and address of their advertiser and somebody knocks on the spammer's door with a summons. Then the spammer packs up and moves back from LA to Vegas and sets up shop with a brand new name and low cost DSL for business connection he saw advertised in a spam fax.

      How do they get your fax number?
      Well. Most businesses publish their number, then the rest is easy. If it's on a website, crawlers look for any sequence of numbers after the word FAX. Business to Business directories as published by the phone companies are gold mines for them.
      If the number is not published anywhere, it can still be ferreted out and hit with these things. Some outfits use automated dialers that go through the list of working numbers for any given exchange and flag anything that answers with fax or modem tones. If you answer and say "hello" the machine hangs up on you and strikes your number from That list. It may well remember it to another list for a telemarketer. Later the list of machine answered numbers will be dialed by the fax server and spammed.
      The only way to NOT get them is to... well... not have a fax machine.

2. the Faxes and the Companies

      OK, from the start. SOME of the businesses mentioned in the faxes appear to be real live going commercial concerns. And some of them claim not to know anything about the faxes that are using their names.
      Others are obviously heavily involved, as is the case with those mentioned in 'hot stock tip' type faxes which are often the focus in 'Pump and Dump' schemes.
      And now the obvious question:
      "But my friend's cousin's bookie's bartender's nephew got a really good deal on a mortgage / cruise / cel phone / used car / etc from one of those faxes. Some of them have to be for real. Why shouldn't I call them?"
      And the obvious answer:
      "No they didn't. And if they did, that was the one exception out of the hundreds of faxes collected for this article that proves the rule."
      ALL OF THEM ARE SCAMS.
      We shall say it again, without any worry at all that there will be any meaningful dissent or disagreement. Dang Near Every single one of these types of faxes are SCAMS. Let's put it at 99.99 percent.
      OK, maybe there is a vendor that your company deals with that is promoting their new line of cel phones or laptops. And maybe they will make good on the offer if you call them about it. Maybe. (And they will probably also quit sending you faxes if you call them and tell them to. The others won't.)
      That would be one out of how many of these things that come out of the fax machine almost every night?
      For this article we counted them. One machine in this building had seven of them sitting on it on Monday morning. Another had four. The total of known spam faxes for One Building for One Day was twenty two. See the Pictures of some of them.
      They included offers to train users on Microsoft Excel. Loans at 1.25%. Stock tips including the nanotechnology one. A cruise deal. Even hand made furniture.
      One Morning's Collection. Twenty Two faxes.

      So is there really some little old woodworker sitting at the other end of a fax number waiting for an order for furniture?
      It is possible.
      But most likely your name and number will fall into the hands of a high pressure telemarketer that will call and push you into buying a houseful of furniture at a finance rate so high that when you get your statement your eyes will bleed. And because you did fax them back, you DID establish a business relationship, so your complaint call to the FCC's Do Not Call line will end up in a wastebasket.

      Some of these things attempt to personalize themselves to somebody in the office by addressing themselves to common gender-neutral names such as Pat or Chris. One of them is trying to look like something cut out of a newspaper with a hand written note across the top, complete with a reference to a TV news show to give it credibility. Well...
      What they are pushing is one of the newer weight loss drugs- Pyruvate. And it does seem to have some benefit as a supplement. It is, of course, controversial, and its primary effect in the body is mainly as a stimulant. Pyruvate info at www.supplementwatch.com
      Was it covered on the news programs on ABC and NBC as the fax claims? Yes.
      Yes indeed. And one NBC station (WJAR, New Bedford, MS / Providence, RI) reported the following about pyruvate and its cousins.

Beware of quick fixes said to increase metabolism and burn more fat, such as herbs and other products. There is no proof that these pills and powders -- including chromium picolinate, pyruvate, and ephedra (ma huang) -- are effective. And they can actually be harmful in some cases, causing heart palpitations and possible chromosomal damage.
www.turnto10.com

      And then there are the out and out rip-offs and scams.
      Such as the vacation scam faxes.
      They are still out there. Selling Florida vacations starting at ninety nine dollars (only 100 reservations available). If you call them with your credit card number to hold your spot, you will get a bill, they will get your money, and we will all pay for it while the scammer takes the only real Florida vacation associated with the whole thing. We all pay for it because you will report it as a crime and the card company will refund your money, but they have to make up the difference someplace, so they charge higher interest or increase fees to cover it. We all lose and the scammer wins because by the time the cops in Vegas kick in their door, our old friend the scammer has moved back to LA.
      For more information check out www.crimes-of-persuasion.com

      Pump and Dump stock tips.
      There is a reason even the most adventurous day trader has never heard of some of these stocks. Yes there is a real company out there called Deep Rock Oil or Global Aerial or the nanotech one. And yes, last week they were trading at nine cents a share. There's a very good reason for it... Maybe that's all its worth.
      But once interest is increased by everybody and their sister getting the spam fax, and its mentioned on somebody's news show, and a legitimate stock watching outfit like www.wallstreetnewsalert.com (who also did not send you that fax) looks at it, maybe it'll move up to twenty cents a share. And then whoever bought nine million shares of it two weeks ago at seven cents a share, Sells. By next week, it'll be back down to six cents a share and you will be stuck with two thousand shares that you bought at eighteen cents.
      And what of the originator of the stock tip spam fax? He's in the next cottage down from the guy that was selling the vacation scams. Tomorrow they'll play tennis together and talk about how they scammed a bunch of people out of their hard earned money.
      No, most likely the spammer was NOT the CEO of Deep Rock Aerial Nanotech. He has too much to lose and the SEC has no sense of humor about these things. He'll go to jail if he's caught on that Insider Trading thing- remember Martha and friends? No. The fax spammer is probably one of those Kings of the Penny Stocks. Sooner or later the Fed will catch up with him, but in the mean time, he has your money. Two good pages of information from the Security and Exchange Commission Pump and Dump page and their Investment info at the site www.sec.gov

      Bottom line.
      You don't want to do business with ANYBODY that sends out a spam fax. No matter how badly you want to buy a seized car for a dollar, don't even try to do it from one of these things. At the very least, you'll only encourage them to send more.

Who's sending them?

      It's like those that sell email addresses.
      Email address lists come at a few dollars to the million. Specialty lists and those that have 'opted in' can cost a little more. The sellers of the list all but promise a rate of return from two percent to maybe twenty percent for a list of really hot prospects. That doesn't sound like a lot, and its not, until you figure out what two percent of fifteen million is then multiply it by whatever you're selling for nineteen ninety-nine... "if you call today, supplies at this price are limited!"
      The fax list suppliers make no such claims. It could be because it would be harder to verify actual inquiries based on the faxes, or that they simply don't care.

      If you want to get your message out. No matter what that message is. They will relay it for you for the low price of 10,000 faxes for nine hundred dollars (listguy- see below).
      One has to wonder about the legality of this practice. None of the sites listed below seemed to care what the content of the fax was that was being sent out. It could be a legitimate ad for the cel phone company that we mentioned earlier. Or it could be a vacation scam or stock pump and dump. They just relay the ad you compose to their list of 'subscribers', for a fee.

A short Rogue's Gallery of Faxing Companies

Use links below at your own risk. Some of them also use popup ads and who knows what other sort of mal / ad-ware. Also, these links worked the day this article was posted, given the "transient" nature of their business, they may not work tomorrow.

www.listguy.com
Do you send over 10,000 faxes per week? If so, we can set you up with your own internet interface to do your own broadcasting through our system. We have over 3000 dedicated fax lines ready to broadcast your message at over 50,000 faxes per hour.

www.blifax.com
from FAQ page

How can I personalize my fax documents?
      You will have to input field header names within your document header using pound signs (#) before and after the field header title (i.e., #NAME#). You can currently personalize your fax documents using up to six headers. Personalization within the body of your document is unlimited.
How do I view a full summary of my campaign?
      Fax by WebLaunch has a user-friendly interface that contains all the details of your fax campaigns per tracking number. Find out delivery results, preview a sample of the campaign before it is sent, and more.

clickfax.com: 2000 a month for $85, other long term/high volume plans available

Last one- Faxes and SPAM email for hire launchfax.com

"Power Email Broadcasting is for our select group of clients who send out thousands of emails with large attachments, and require virtually instantaneous delivery....Our Burstable DS3 network..."

      Clearly there is money being made sending these things out.

3. Legal stuff

Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON FAX TRANSMISSIONS CONTAINING UNSOLICITED ADVERTISEMENTS.

(a) Prohibition.--Section 227(b)(1)(C) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1)(C)) is amended to read as follows:
``(C) to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send, to a telephone facsimile machine, an unsolicited advertisement...

The FCC's page on the Act
www.fcc.gov

To the law passed in the USA in July of 2005 ACTUAL TEXT from www.govtrack.us

      It IS illegal to send unsolicited commercial faxes, and emails and telephone calls too for that matter.
      Yet just as some telemarketers are still calling you during dinner. You are also still getting SPAM in your email box. AND this writer has a stack of several hundred spam faxes, every one of which was sent by someone who was knowingly breaking Federal and State law.

      Yet the only workable recourse available for local prosecution would be IF the fax was sent by somebody in the same state as the fax machines that got them. Then state law would allow for charges to be brought against those that either sent it, or hired the firm to send it. However. Only ONE of the entire stack was sent by a verifiable IN STATE number. And when this writer called them, they apologized and said they'd take the numbers involved off their list.
      That's one sender.
      That's one that sent their message to three different fax machines in this building.
      "Oh boy. We're making progress now!"
      Another one had a real number in Ohio. Unfortunately it was a voice line for a car dealer that doesn't fax anybody and was tired of getting calls about it.
      Most of the removal numbers went to recordings that did not promote much hope the message left to have the number removed would ever be acted on. A good percentage of the numbers listed as 'call to be removed from this list' went nowhere. Many of the faxes in the collection HAD no number listed for removal, in clear violation of the law. Which means, at least according to the 1994 version of the law, each of these things now in a pile about five inches deep is worth a five hundred dollar fine.

      There are several ongoing class action lawsuits against the major operators. As was mentioned early in this piece, some of them have gone out of business. Others have gone underground or moved off shore where US law and courts have little if any power.
      If any of the senders had been IN state and failed to remove the offended fax numbers when asked, the full weight of the State Law could come down on them. Fines, possible jail time for the owners, even revocation of their business license and seizure of assets in an extreme case.
      How about for somebody calling from Jamaica?
       ... .... yeah.

      So much for that.

      The law is a perfectly good law. Well written, defines the penalty, discusses the terms of an existing business relationship and how you can opt-out. Even after the fax spammers lobbied the FCC and congress to have its fangs filed down and more loopholes inserted, it is still a workable law for the most part.
      However. In the face of the advance of the technology as discussed above. It is toothless. And the faxers we listed in the last section know it, and they are flaunting it for every dime they can get.
      Even the amended version that should go into effect in 2006 or so may not even slow them down. Just as Can SPAM did little if anything to stop the assault on the inboxes of America. And sadly to say, just as the Do Not Call list has been only marginally effective. Yes, some calls have stopped, but given the loopholes and the loose definition of 'business relationship', it may not last.
      For the law to work the fax sender has to be FOUND. They have to be in the USA or an allied nation that will go after them. Canada is good for that. So is Britain. If they are operating on some island the State's Attorney can't find on a map using FoIP for somebody who does business from a string of PO Boxes in Cancun... what can they do?
      Again, for comparison. The State of Delaware has one of the toughest Anti-SPAM laws for email on the books. It promises dire consequences for anybody sending SPAM past a reasonable point and request to stop. Today some SPAM came in from Hong Kong. In clear violation of the Hong Kong -www.hkispa.org.hk- Anti-SPAM Consortiums rules and Delaware's own laws. The sender was clearly a lawbreaker, and a repeat one at that. Let's call Interpol! Oh, look at that. The header portion of the email was forged. The sending IP address is so much gibberish. Evidently that SPAM message simply appeared on the Net someplace and was forwarded by the gods to that inbox in Delaware just for giggles. There's nobody to arrest. End of the line.
      THAT is also the story with the vast majority of the spam faxes we have been talking about. There is no way to trace them back to anybody that can be put in handcuffs anywhere. Period. And even our friends at Deep Rock have an out- We can't prove it even if they DID send it.

      What will work?
            More on that later.

4. Effect of the faxes

      They cost EVERYBODY money.

      Yes. Every one of the junk faxes used as fuel for this article cost the taxpayers of this state money. In paper- nearly half a ream of typing paper wasted. In ink and toner in the machines- one of the machines in this building monitored for this article was blinking the low toner light all through this process (another agency who was in contact with this writer during this time, reported their machine had jammed during the night when one was coming in and they had to call their vendor for a service call for it, which was billed to the agency). In the electricity needed to run the machine to print them out. Wear and tear on the machine. And the time it would normally take one of the assistants in each department to sort the garbage from the legitimate forms and bid submissions that come in. And it ties up office fax lines that should be available to carry out the business of the State, which is not to receive 'hot stock tips'.
      In the larger scale it is a waste of natural resources- trees, fuel for power plants, whatever they make fax toner/ink out of. Not to mention the use of Internet Bandwidth for SPAM of all descriptions.

      One of the agencies whose complaint something over a month ago led to the initial investigation of these things had a good point. They are a charity, a homeless shelter to be exact. They run on a shoestring budget that includes donated shoestrings. They simply cannot afford have their machine worn out by this kind of... to use their word... "crap" when they have no recourse against them. And their fax machine has to be on, and the number must be published. They get referrals and lists and even order forms from the food bank on it. It is an essential piece of their business infrastructure.
      "Can't somebody do something about it?" They asked.
      This article is part of the answer.... which is.... "sorry, apparently not."

5. WHAT CAN BE DONE and
      who can do it

      Second part of that first.
      Who can do it? YOU Can Do It!

      Throw the danged things away. Recycle them as scrap paper. Turn them over and feed them back to the fax machine upside down.
      DO NOT call the removal number, even if it works, because all that does is confirm that your fax machine works and you are reading the trash they send you.
      DO NOT buy anything from one of these things. Do NOT investigate the Hot Stock Tip, the Time Share Offer, the furniture deal, the sunglasses, diet pill, training class, home business... whatever it is. IT IS .... here's that word again... "crap"... and you DO NOT WANT IT!
      If you MUST do something with them. And it's not a bad idea. Save a month's worth of them and send them to your Congressman, State's Attorney, Governor, the FCC.

      Again. DO NOT RESPOND to the Fax SPAMMER in any way shape or form.
      This same advice goes for Email SPAM and telemarketing calls as well.
      If nobody was sending them money, they'd leave us alone and go find another line of work.

      Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, they'll notice they are losing money paying for that DS3 circuit and their storefront office back in Vegas and close their doors.
      If they were not making money... on that 2% we talked about earlier of people who do call for the cruise special... they'd quit. It is that simple. Nobody is doing this for fun, it is a business.

      As for what else can be done?
      Well the law itself can be revised. Possibly expanding the national electronic crimes unit of the the US Justice Department www.ojp.usdoj.gov to specifically go after the fax spammers.
      Enlist people like Electronic Frontier Foundation www.eff.org, to assist in keeping legislation, which is notoriously slow to adapt, to work with Congress and others up to date enough so that it actually works. Perhaps part of the law should be amended so that somebody at the carrier and / or the ISP can be given the authority to pull the plug on the offending circuit, with no refund to the subscriber, once it is demonstrated they are using the circuit to repeatedly break Federal Law.

      Make resources such as www.junkfax.org and the FCC's page of citations at www.fcc.gov, available to those that are on the front lines (those who have to clean out the fax machine's tray and throw all the junk faxes away) and may not realize that all of them are scams.
      Rally those that are working to educate the public and others who are perhaps unwitting accomplices to these actual crimes, secretaries who think they are doing somebody a favor by checking out the good deals on office supplies on a fax and are only opening the doors and windows to every scammer in the world. One of those who has been carrying that particular banner and making no profit on it is TheMediaDesk.com whose own SCAM and SPAM page is now in its eighth year.
      In short. You can keep up the good fight and even if it's just throwing a junk fax away.

Conclusion

      Junk faxes are a big problem that is growing.

      The solution is not a one line answer. It will take educating the public as well as active prosecution and litigation by those who are receiving them against those who are sending them and those who are benefiting from the activity. It will take time, and effort, and some jail sentences and some hefty fines and THEN and only then it might slow down a little.
      Most likely, junk faxes, as well as their evil cousins- telemarketing calls and email SPAM will, like annoying TV commercials at twice the decibel level of the program they interrupt, be around forever and we have to live with it.
      But just maybe, we can slow them down to a tolerable level.

end of main article, background information and links below

SHORT GLOSSARY