Send and Receive Faxes using Email
Are you fed up with expenses and hassles associated with a fax machine and desperately thinking of an alternative medium through which you can send and receive copies of documents and records?
It seems a solution to your problems is near at hand.
Now you can send and receive faxes using email. So the need for an extra phone line is gone for good and so is the constant pain of paying too much for your online fax service. All that you need now is an email address and internet connection.
Let’s see how this magic of email to fax actually works.
The first step of course is to subscribe to an online faxing provider. Your provider will immediately provide you with a real fax number (some providers also offer fax numbers of a country of your choice – but that essentially is a matter for you to decide). Now all that you have to do is attach all the documents you need to fax just as you do in an email attachment but, instead of typing in the recipient’s email address in the “To” box, simply type in the fax number of the recipient. Your message along with the attachments reaches the recipient’s desktop fax machine just like any other ordinary fax. So, the essential difference in this new system is instead of using a conventional fax machine or fax server supplies, you fax by email.
Let’s now see what happens when you receive a fax.
The fax number your provider has given you looks and feels like any other ordinary fax number to the sender so you needn’t have to do any explaining whatsoever to your business contacts when you shift to this new system. When you receive an online fax it is delivered in your inbox like an ordinary email with documents faxed included as attachments. You can read, download or take hard copies of those documents according to your requirement.
So the days for interminable waiting for a fax to transmit are finally over. There’s an additional facility as well. You can fax to multiple recipients at one go, simply by including their fax numbers in the “To” box. No more monotonous passing of all the pages of the documents through the fax machine for each recipient!
One other crucial benefit of internet fax is this fax service can be accessed anywhere as long as there is an internet connection. So, you can receive paperless fax messages while on the move and connectivity increases manifold. But there is a downside too.
Your ability to receive fax online also makes you more susceptible to unsolicited faxes. Faxing spam is spreading like an epidemic and authorities have already enacted laws which heavily penalize those who send junk fax to unwilling recipients.
The Junk Fax Prevention Act, enacted on July 9, 2005 by US Congress requires senders of fax advertisements to include a notice and contact information on the cover page informing the recipient how to”opt-out” of any future fax advertisements. It also makes fax broadcaster liable if it is proved that it is actively involved in sending junk faxes.
