Did you know the first patent for a fax machine was granted in the 1800s?
The technology never really took off in popularity until the 1980s. While a lot of convenient technology has been invented since then, faxing remains one of the best ways to securely deliver important documents to others.
Are you wondering how to send a fax safely? Keep reading to learn all 4 of our tips to send a fax online safely.
1. Leave a Signature or Another Kind of Mark
Whether you’re on one side of the country and your recipient is on another, you can send a fax in a matter of seconds.
This is much more convenient and quicker than sending someone a copy of those pages through the mail. The main difference between a fax and email is that a fax uses phone lines while emails are transmitted over the internet.
While anyone can send an email and try to make it look like it’s from you or someone you know, it’s much harder to falsify a fax. This is because a fax can come with an actual signature from the sender and can even be handwritten. To send a fax safely, it’s a good rule of thumb to include at least one signature or mark that can’t be known or replicated by someone with bad intentions.
This is why some of the biggest industries in the world rely on faxes for sending sensitive documents rather than just emailing everything. You can start to realize the advantages of sending a fax when you see that businesses are becoming more and more vulnerable to phishing scams, ransomware, and other types of cybercrimes.
2. Find a Reputable Service Provider
Before you even think about sending a fax online, you’ll need to find a reliable service provider. If you choose a business that doesn’t have much of a reputation, then your sensitive data could be at risk.
To be safe, you should spend some time looking up what other customers have said about the provider. No reviews at all can often be a warning sign, but you also want to watch out for perfect praise. The most realistic ratings have the occasional negative review as well.
Not all service providers have an equal amount of security. It’s a good idea to look over a given business’s website and see what measures they take to keep your sensitive data safe. If you can’t find specifics, then don’t hesitate to reach out to them for more information.
Whether they even get back to you can be a general indication of the kind of service they offer. You should be on the lookout for customer service that’s prompt and as helpful as possible.
Once you find the best service, you can email them the scan or PDF of your sensitive documents and they’ll make sure it gets into the right hands.
3. Ensure You Have SSL Encryption
If you want to take advantage of the benefits of a fax machine in the safest way possible, be sure you don’t do anything without SSL encryption. SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and is a security protocol that’s quite common but isn’t implemented by every website or email provider.
Are you wondering how it works? The SSL protocol encrypts all information that’s sent from one computer to another. This means that any cybercriminals who try to get at that info during the sending process will find a meaningless mess of numbers, letters, and characters.
Part of the encryption process also involves the equivalent of a digital greeting that’s unique to the sender and recipient.
This is yet another indication of whether a service provider is reliable or not. You definitely don’t want to use their services if you don’t see signs of SSL encryption. Any site that has it will show a “lock” icon next to their address, but it may just show up as HTTPS at the beginning of the URL.
If you only see HTTP preceding their website address and no “S”, then that site doesn’t have SSL encryption.
For email, both you and your provider would need to ensure that your email is configured to use a secure connection.
4. Sending a Fax In Person is the Safest Way
When you send something over the internet, there’s always a possibility that it could be intercepted by a third party no matter how many precautions you take. That’s why sending a fax in person is the most secure way.
When you send a fax by hand, it gets placed directly into the other party’s hands and is then physically handled by that person. Of course, this isn’t an option for everyone so there are other ways to send a fax without worrying too much about something going wrong.
Now You Know About Sending a Fax Safely
You should be able to send a fax securely now that you’ve learned all 4 of our faxing tips.
Be sure to contact Goin’ Postal for all of your faxing needs and you can have some peace of mind knowing your fax is in good hands.
We can send your fax in person if you come to one of our stores, or you can send us your documents by email and easily pay over the phone with a credit card for only $1 per page.