Well, Faxing is Still a Thing.

 

The original fax machines used thermal paper. They were huge, amazing, definitely going to put FedEx out of business. Next were plain paper fax machines. so high tech. However, all these early fax machines had problems with the rollers. A buildup of toner would make the fax get get dirty while being processed. Also, small fonts didn’t resolve well.

These days we fax via an internet fax service provider. Digital faxes are much cleaner than the old paper versions. Since they are delivered as a .pdf document they are easy to file on your local machine.

 

Interestingly,  old paper fax machines, connected to a standard phone line, are still used for ‘secure’ environments. If the sender and the receiver both use a standard fax machine that scans paper, sends it over a phone line and the receiving person has it printed out from their paper fax machine, then there is no e-mail to intercept or hack. Of course the phone line could be tapped , but most hacking occurs on computer communications. Once the fax is sent, there's no copy on a server.  

The 21^st century fix to secure faxing is the HIPPA fax. It’s sent via e-mail but requires a separate log in to a secure portal.