Right to be Offline / Analog / Unplugged 🔌📪📖📟📝

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The developed world is increasingly forcing people to use incompetently designed technology. The #digitalTransformation movement is being forced onto people.

Just like we cannot rely on the public sector to solve the climate crisis, we also cannot rely on the public sector to deploy well-designed privacy-respecting inclusive technology. We always need an analog option.

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freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz

📠 How getting a FAX-only number can improve your privacy and control -- while pushing back against the loss of ℻ infra (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago by freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz to c/right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz

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Every bank, shitty giant social media platform and countless websites demand a phone number. It’s foolish to give them a voice number (esp. mobile) unless you actually welcome calls from them, their partners, whoever they sell your data to, and whoever exfiltrates it. The best move with all these untrustworthy data-sharing-happy businesses is to give them a pure fax number which is answered only by a fax machine.

In the rare case where reaching you is so important that they would use the number to send you a fax, then it’s probably a message you want to receive anyway (and best to have it in writing). I kept a gratis fax number for decades and never got fax spam.

One extra perk to this is if customer files have fax-only numbers, it could give some pause before a company decides to ditch their fax line.

My unsolved problem:

J2.com no longer gives free fax numbers. I can only find providers who charge a flat subscription of ~$15—25/month (which includes an allowance on outbound faxes). I don’t really need a fax sending svc. I wouldn’t mind paying <$10/year just to have a number that emails faxes to me, even if there is some small measured rate when it actually gets used. A pay-per-fax service like that is hard to find. Any tips would be appreciated.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

One extra perk to this is if customer files have fax-only numbers, it could give some pause before a company decides to ditch their fax line.

Not even remotely. Ever heard of Efax?
You email the phone number and the Efax company sends the fax.

In the rare case where reaching you is so important that they would use the number to send you a fax

More likely they would call it, get the fax tone and mark it as a wrong number until you contact them.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Not even remotely. Ever heard of Efax? You email the phone number and the Efax company sends the fax.

eFax was bought by j2.com, so indeed i’m aware of it. Efax, Jconnect, j2.. all the same ownership.

Fax is being ditched by those who think it is no longer used, regardless of whether they have dedicated equipment or a gateway. It’s the same decision. Either they ditch their fax service (i.e. their fax line is virtual), or they ditch their fax hardware. Or they decide to keep the fax number because they see they have customers who still use fax.

More likely they would call it, get the fax tone and mark it as a wrong number until you contact them.

They can suit themselves.. that doesn’t matter to me either way if they decide to alternatively pay postage to reach me. Of course they’re going to be waiting a long time for me to reach them if they don’t signal to me that they want to reach me. If I decide to call them from my non-DID SIP line, the caller ID is set to spoof my fax number, which shows them the number is still correct.

[–] angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I can tell you right now that this is going to blow up in your face if you're playing these games with the bank, or anyone that sends you a bill

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

How so? No blow-ups in the decades I’ve been doing it. People are not obligated to be voice-reachable (at least not by any laws I’ve encountered). Creditors need to send you a bill, sure, but that’s their problem. If they can’t handle fax they better be willing to use snail mail.

What’s blowing up in people’s faces is the culture of sharing a mobile number that then takes the role of identification, which then gets exfiltrated by cyber criminals. The abuse of using mobile numbers as an identifier has spread through Europe and only a small segment of privacy advocates currently realise the problem.

Twitter demanded a mobile number from me. Would not take a fax number. So I walked. Shortly after, Twitter had a data breach that leaked everyone’s mobile numbers. Then Twitter was caught abusing the mobile numbers themselves in ways not allowed in the privacy policy.

Americans are extra fucked because there is no privacy safeguard. The bank shares the number with the credit bureau, who then shares it with all members (banks, insurers, etc) and those who will pay for it.