this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 77 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Legally defined as secure, not actually secure.

They are fairly insecure in practice, since they are throwing the data at misdialed numbers and they are frequently placed in shared and insecure locations in the building where lots of people can access whatever comes through.

[–] Libra@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 days ago

Sure. But as someone who used to work IT with a focus on cybersecurity, physical access to anything trumps everything else, and people who put fax machines in insecure locations will also put email servers or whatever in them. Also throwing data at misdialed numbers is a tiny threat because the odds of transposing a number or whatever and also getting a fax machine are pretty tiny.

Although the guy above you was just talking about how he works in the industry and they mostly do efax now, which.. Iono how that's supposed to be more secure than just email or whatever. I guess if you're sending to physical machines it's more secure on that end, but if the senders are using efax some of the receivers prolly are too, at which point we've lost the whole point of using fax machines.

[–] BlackVenom@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

In the US they cannot be in "insecure locations" legally. And sending HIPAA materials to the wrong number is a reportable offense.