Is a Fax an Email? FCC Says Yes, Junk Fax Rules Don't Apply

• The FCC Declatory Ruling Says Yes, but that's not always the case. 
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Right before the COVID outbreak, over the 2019-2020 holiday season, something profound happened, but it went below the radar. Declaratory Ruling DA-19-1247 says faxes are emails and thus Junk Fax rules are moot. 

Here's the FCC Description of the Declaratory Ruling  DA-19-1247

"By this declaratory ruling, we make clear that an online fax service that effectively receives faxes “sent as email over the Internet” and is not itself “equipment which has the capacity . . . to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper” is not a “telephone facsimile machine” and thus falls outside the scope of the statutory prohibition."

This is good news for defendants, but not in those cases where the recipient endpoint is a fax machine or MFP. Those plaintiffs have a leg to stand on. 

The 'faxes' are sent via a telephone number, telco carriers transmit them, but on the recipient end, it's an email in an inbox somewhere; no tied-up phone line, no waste of paper and toner. Is it really this simple?

Link is here

• Full Title: Amerifactors Financial Group, LLC Petition for Expedited Declaratory Ruling; Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991; Junk Fax Protection Act 1995
• Document Type(s): Order
• Bureau(s): Consumer and Governmental Affairs

Description:
Granted a request for declaratory ruling that online fax services that receive faxes fall outside of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's prohibitions on telephone facsimile machines

• DA/FCC #: DA-19-1247
• Docket/RM: 02-278, 05-338
• FCC Record Citation: 34 FCC Rcd 11950 (15)

FCC Record: DA-19-1247A1_Rcd.pdf

"Hack" Fax now available?

Ethical Hacking is Attacking Faxing?

Cyber security experts from Check Point exposed what some believe to be an Achilles heel for the secure T.30 fax protocol.  Hyperbole is popping up on the internet quickly.  The news was recently disclosed publicly August 12 at "DEFCON 26,” a hacking conference.  This comes after HP reportedly offered ethical hackers $10,000 if they could find any issues with their devices. 

In layman's terms, the research concluded that vulnerabilities exist with color fax files - they don't "look" like a standard fax TIF and their payload is accepted, unchecked. When the payload is "opened," the MFP passes through malware that was embedded in the fax file, and the network becomes exposed.

Several fax vendors have been quick to post their own statements about this over the last few days.   It is important to note that some vendors are asserting the fax protocol itself is not to blame and remains secure; that the HP devices are responsible for the vulnerability. This is contrary to what Check Point suggested in their presentation.

The Check Point analysts claim that their research and "hack" were tested solely on HP Office Jet All-in-One devices. However, they say the impacts of this, if confirmed and validated further, could be far reaching. "We strongly believe that similar vulnerabilities apply to other fax vendors too as this research concerns the fax communication protocols in general."

Check it out for yourself, here: https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark-ages/

And HP's original invite:

http://fortune.com/2018/07/31/hp-is-paying-researchers-10000-hack-its-printers/

Find out more about the impact MFPs have in the future of fax in the upcoming Fax2020 Market Report.  www.Fax2020.com

Hello Fax Community - Fax Over Cloud updates.

Colleagues, Friends, Associates in the Cloud Fax Industry:

Greetings! It has been TOO long since I've posted anything on the FOC blog.  I wanted to assure my audience that Fax Over Cloud continues! For the last 4 months I 've been remiss in posting anything new.

Why? - chalk it up to personal reasons (health issues primarily, plus we've moved, had a server failure which recovered, a domain failure which was recovered -- and I took a full-time temporary assignment to boot- whew!)

To reiterate - Fax Over Cloud continues to move forward. I am proud to state that I am actively working on some new content and papers and will have news to post soon.

So - stay tuned!  It's good to be back!

Mark Malone
Fax Industry Analyst