Faxline feature suggestions

[Guest]

Right now, the Faxline service has two features that could be changed to improve privacy.

1. The service currently adds the account owner's real name to the top of every faxed page, even if a cover sheet is not sent. I know the Faxline service is still in its early stages, but it would be helpful if that name could be edited or removed. It would help preserve the sender's privacy. It would also prevent confusion when a fax is sent on behalf of someone else who doesn't have the same name.

2. The service automatically adds the sender's fax number to the top of every page. This is a problem when you don't want the receiving party to know the number the fax was sent from. Fusion already has a caller ID block feature for the phone line. The Faxline should be no different.

Please consider adding this features.

[Guest]

The name and number in fax headers are required by Federal Communications Commission rules, 47 CFR 68.318(d):

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2012-t ... 68-318.xml

In principle, these could be different than the subscriber's name and FaxLine number, as long as they were accurate, but they cannot be removed.

[Guest]

Thanks for the link!

I agree with you about the accuracy of the sender's name and fax number. If I'm sending a fax using a friend's fax machine or fax service, I would like to be able to put my own real name on top of the fax so people know that the documents are coming from me. Also, the phrase "via Sonic.net FaxLine" is not necessary to meet the FCC's rules. Being able to edit the field to provide more accurate information would be helpful, but Faxline doesn't allow that right now.

And just to clarify about the caller ID issue, when I get a faxes from some people, their "caller ID" shows up as "restricted," and the "caller name" shows up as "unavailable". Only the "remote station" shows. Is this remote station the number from which the fax was sent? Because if so, this person technically didn't break the FCC's rules; their real number shows as "remote station" even if their caller ID is blocked. Blocking caller ID might even help prevent confusion because the caller ID only shows the real sender's information and you can't change caller ID, so I still think the feature of blocking caller ID could still be useful without breaking the FCC's rules. If I'm reading the rule correctly, I can supply my own fax machine's number even when using a friend's Faxline service. It would therefore help to have an editable prefilled field for the fax number so that it could be changed if needed (to better reflect the sender's information).

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

[virtualmike]

And just to clarify about the caller ID issue, when I get a faxes from some people, their "caller ID" shows up as "restricted," and the "caller name" shows up as "unavailable". Only the "remote station" shows. Is this remote station the number from which the fax was sent?

In a traditional fax machine, the remote station ID is a configurable setting that the user can change. Fax technology predates the technology that enables caller-ID, so older fax machines can only get the information during the handshake that occurs when the two machines start talking.

Even though technology has advanced, in order to allows fax machines to communicate with each other, they all need to work with the "lowest common denominator."

Thus, the number that's sent can be different from the phone number assigned to the analog phone line. Or, as we've seen with FaxLine, there is no analog phone line, but a number still must be sent.

About 15-20 years ago, when fax spam (before the term "spam" had been associated with unwanted email) was rampant, many of the people wasting others' fax paper programmed their machines with bogus numbers, just as email spammers would try to hide behind false senders' addresses, and today, phone solicitors send bogus caller ID down the line.