Online Fax Advisor

What is online fax?

Online fax (or internet fax), as the name suggests, is a method of sending fax using the internet. An online fax service provider is required to convert a fax message into a format which can be received using a fax machine or an e-mail service. This is a great way to reduce traditional fax transmission costs especially when a long fax is being sent to a distant office (or overseas).

Here is how it works:

First of all, the original document (hard copy) is converted to a computer readable format which is usually TIFF or PDF. A scanner may be used to do so. Then this converted file is sent making use of TCP/IP protocol.

Benefits of Online Fax

As compared to traditional fax, online fax has several benefits. It saves you money, time and efforts. Besides it’s much more secure than traditional fax. Here are a few of many benefits of online fax:

The question rises here that how can one save time by using the technology of online fax?

If you are sending or receiving file via email, that means you don’t have to wait at the fax machine. You don’t need to worry about broken lines or faults in a fax machine. You can access fax at anytime you want. To save time, you may send outgoing faxes to multiple addresses simultaneously. The technology of online faxing is more convenient as compared to traditional faxing. There’s no need to be bound to a specific location to access fax service. You can send or receive faxes at any time, anywhere you want. You don’t have to be online in order to receive faxes. It works just like email. You can receive your important documents even if you are offline. You’ll be able to receive your urgent faxes sent to you outside business hours. No more waiting for the next business day to retrieve your fax. You can do that immediately.

Save Money With Online Fax

Obviously, it is more than clear that online fax is more convenient in terms of time. And not only it saves you a lot of time, but it saves you a decent amount of money too. For example: You save the money to buy a traditional fax machine. If you have a computer and have access to the internet, you can take full advantage of online fax. No special or dedicated fax line is needed to send faxes. Thus it also saves money. As opposed to the traditional fax, the outgoing faxes do not need to be printed. This reduces the cost by a lot as there is a lot of money required to buy paper, toner etc. You get a personal fax number totally free of charge. So there is no need to spend money to get a fax number. You’re getting it free of cost. Incoming faxes are delivered to your e-mail inbox instantly.

Energy Saving

Traditional faxing uses some of most energy consuming equipments. While, internet fax in just like email in which no extra phone lines are used and no additional equipment is required. Thus this is a more effective way to save a little bit of energy.

Online Fax Security

We all know that security has become a major concern among the individuals or businesses tending to send important data to one another. Sending your confidential documents using the internet is more security.

Here are some of key features of online faxing regarding security issues:

Secure online APs (access points)

In contrast to the traditional faxing which can be easily seen by anyone around the machine, online fax services often require you to login to your account using a specific username and password before you an view anything.

Formatting of Faxes

Not long ago, faxes used to be in a digital text format, which could be copied and pasted into the clipboard with a great ease. In order to overcome this difficulty, graphics fax formatting was introduced. This technology uses a graphical format which can not be easily copied and pasted somewhere else. It has really dominated the online faxing technology. Now people feel free to send and receive faxes on the internet without the fear their data being hacked or stolen as there is no way to copy or paste text into an image file.

Encrypted Transmission

Gone are those days when everyone could view a fax of someone else just by standing beside them. Now you can encrypt your document so that only intended receipt can decode it. There are many options to encrypt you fax like password protecting. You can set a password to open the fax so that only authorized receipt can open and view that password protected text. Just set a password and let your receipt know about this. If accidentally, your fax goes in some wrong hands, they can’t even open it.

Tracking and Reporting

Almost every online fax providing service has a bunch of tracking, reporting and auditing tools. Using these tools you can know various things such as when and from which IP address the fax was sent, how many times your fax has been viewed and even which and how man users tried to view that fax etc. These tools enable you to ensure some of really important security matters. You’ll be completely aware of what is going on and who from where is viewing your fax. You’ll also be able to make sure that the fax you send, reaches its destination securely or not? In fact using these tools for online fax, you’ll control each and ever bit of your data to be sent or received. That’s really cool.

Self Deleting Faxes

This is a less known feature of online fax which is offered by a few of internet fax service provider companies. Using this tool, you can set your important fax to self-delete itself after a certain number of views or after a certain number of days without being read. This adds a little bit of extra security. But sometimes, it can be dangerous too. Suppose you sent a fax which will delete itself after, say 10 views. Now if the fax goes into unauthorized hands and somehow they gain access to it, they will view it for 10 times and it will delete itself without being read by the concerned person. So if you want to use this tool, you’ll have to use it wisely.