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Junk faxes

I hate to miss out on things, and after having had a fax at home for several years I have finally started receiving junk faxes, at present just two pages each time (in the middle of the night). This is mildly annoying because it wastes my paper and ink, but thankfully it hasn’t woken me up (so far) or made me worry who is calling, unlike BWG.

This was mentioned in Technology Post last week, and PCCW suggested that (as well as reporting the offenders in the normal way) you could subscribe to their “block the blocker” service. Two problems with this – the first is that you have to pay PCCW for this service, and the second is that it presumably blocks international calls as well (since they do not have a caller id). Since I do (admittedly very rarely) want to receive faxes from overseas this seems like a serious drawback. Of course, the low-tech solution is to switch off the fax at night – or I suppose the high-tech option is to use fax software and check incoming faxes before printing them.

I wonder if Bill Gates has a solution for this?

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6 responses to “Junk faxes”

  1. henry avatar
    henry

    you could just check my blog, I had the same problem the other week and sorted it

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  2. Chris avatar
    Chris

    I knew someone else apart from BWG was suffering from this problem, but I couldn’t remember who it was.
    The problem with the junk faxes I’m receiving is that there is no telephone number or other information about the sender (though obviously there is a contact number for the company selling office equipment). However, I’ll try PCCW anyway and see what happens.

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  3. henry avatar
    henry

    doesn’t matter if there is no telephone number apart from the advertised one.
    once you have registered with pccw on their Do-not-call list, any further junk faxes can be faxed to them.
    once they recieve them, they call the advertiser (if there is no other fax number available on the fax) and warn them that if they don’t inform pccw who their bulk fax distributor is, they will be disconnected.
    once the bulk fax sender is found, they get one warning, then snip..no more junk faxes.
    the law is soon going to be changed with regard to junk faxes, at the moment, all bulk fax senders have to do things a specific way, or they get disconnected, but they can then re-apply under a new name and get a new line…once the new law comes into effect, they will be disconnected and then taken to court for spamming…after that, no telco will touch them (in theory)
    hope this helps you, it helped me a lot(although I still get a few junk faxes from time to time…but faxing them to pccw usually stops any future faxes)
    like I said, check my blog, it’s not just rants! 🙂

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  4. Paul avatar
    Paul

    A couple of months ago I also started receiving junk faxes in the middle of the night. Same thing had happened to a couple of friends and, after scratching our heads, we realised we’d all recently applied for Citibank credit cards. Coincidence – probably not.
    I have block-the-blocker and it stopped the faxes but it doesn’t seem to stop overseas calls (for some reason UK calls seem to now show as 31** **** numbers).
    HTH
    Cheers.

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  5. LX avatar
    LX

    Junk faxes are already very much illegal and each fax is already worth (at a minimum under federal statutes) $500-$1500 in damages. Do not pay to have a “junk fax blocker” service. Research at http://www.tcpalaw.com or http://www.junkfax.org.

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  6. LX avatar
    LX

    My previous comments were, of course, intended for US residents who have historically proven to be confused as to the current state of the law and have been victimized by the “junk fax blocker” scams here in the US. No offense to those suffering elsewhere in the world.
    LX

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