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What (preferably free) services are there to send and/or receive faxes, and which one(s) do you recommend? (besides a fax modem)

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I have not tried it yet but gotfreefax says it is ad free on the fax pages. (sending only)

  • Truly FREE!
  • No-Ad free fax cover page
  • 3 pages per fax maximum
  • 2 free faxes per day maximum
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I just tried this and it appears to be totally legit. I guess they just make money off the ads on the page itself or hope you sign up for the pay service. – Chris Jan 24 '11 at 23:35
I sent a couple of free pages without issue. – JoelHess Apr 13 '11 at 21:01
I also confirm this appears to be a good service. Sent a test to my office fax machine and it came out clean and ad-free. Paid up front for 100 pages so I won't have to think about it next time I need to send a fax. Pro tip: always call the target number from a voice phone first and make sure it's really a fax machine. – Brendan Kidwell Jul 21 '11 at 22:26
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up vote 7 down vote

I doubt you will find 100% free as unlike email or complete digital services, faxing requires sending over a telephone line which will cost someone, somewhere.

When my mum went to America and I needed to send something urgently, I found Fax Zero which basically lets you send PDFs and attaches adverts to the start and finish - however, it does not affect the message and it works well.

I also found Free Fax which looks similar but can send internationally, I have no experience with them and cannot rate them.

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You made a mistake in the link texts. – SLaks Nov 22 '09 at 3:05
+1, whoops, thanks. – William Hilsum Nov 22 '09 at 3:07
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You still have a mistake in the link texts. – SLaks Nov 22 '09 at 3:32
Thanks again, don't know what's wrong with me today! – William Hilsum Nov 22 '09 at 3:58
@William the gotfreefax service provides 2 fax / day, 3 pg / fax, no ads, free. 100% free to the end user. The company earns their money on larger volume users. – David Oct 14 '11 at 3:31
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up vote 2 down vote

eFax will give you a free (ad-sponsored) inbound fax number. Like the other services, they will forward the fax to you as an e-mail. The only gotcha to receiving free faxes is that you have to also consent to receiving eFax's occasional e-mails advertising third-party products.

Unfortunately, you have to pay a monthly fee in order to send faxes. It's cheaper than having a dedicated fax line, but if you don't send very many faxes, then it probably isn't worth it.

One thing that has concerned me about online faxing is that fax-to-email services don't encrypt the faxes (at least, the ones I've looked into didn't have that option at the time), and I doubt they encrypt the transmission itself. Faxes often contain highly confidential or personal information, and even though most phone networks are now packet-switched networks, it still seems like a landline-to-landline fax transmission (i.e., no unencrypted VOIP or e-mail involved) is less likely to be intercepted or snooped. I wouldn't use an online fax service for anything that seems too sensitive to send unencrypted via e-mail.

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Regular faxes across the phone lines are not encrypted either. – Bostonvaulter Nov 22 '09 at 5:00
Yes, but my impression is that landline-to-landline traffic doesn't traverse a public network. Because of this, it would not be as easy for someone to snoop on your landline calls without tapping a physical phone line or having access to the phone network (of either you or the person you're calling). – rob Nov 23 '09 at 18:58
You may be right, but there's no way to know. For example, regular phone calls are often transmitted via microwave transmission or satellite, these are public media which can be intercepted. If you need confidentiality, you need encryption. – sleske Jan 29 '10 at 9:49
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up vote 1 down vote

I'm sending faxes via freeFAX, an ad-sponsored free online fax sending service.

I'm using Faxaway to receive faxes (sign-up is free, you only pay for sending). You'll get a real fax number that you can give to anyone who wants to send a fax to you. When that fax number receives an inbound fax, Faxaway answers the call, saves the fax as a TIF image, and forwards it on to your email address.

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up vote 0 down vote

I use Freepopfax for urgent fax sending. They offer free fax sending to the most popular destinations and email confirmation on fax delivery.

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You might want to disclose that you WORK for popfax.com as it says on your Bio. – Evildonald Dec 27 '11 at 18:16
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