FAX machines first appeared in the early eighties.
They were a magical new toy. It was going to put an end to the post office. Just a crazy cool technology, at the time.

Because they were cool, and not much business was really being done with them yet, people started sending joke lists around. This was the original electronic spam.I personally created a joke list and placed my business card in the middle of the page.

People would send them to their friends. They did my advertising for me. This is THE ORIGINAL version of something going viral.

Soon enough, businesses started to send unsolicited faxes selling their services. That was a problem because every fax got printed out.
And the toner and paper were expensive. So it was a real concern for the bean counters.

Today your faxes probably arrive digitally, usually in your e-mail. While it's still a problem, at least they don't automatically print out anymore.

Faxing are still used by a lot of businesses.

It's considered a 'safe' way to transmit documents because they don't include malware. A document sent from one fax 'machine' to another fax 'machine' over a standard phone line is not generally hackable. It doesn't sit on a web server or e-mail account.

Once it's transmitted and printed out there is no electronic copy hanging around. However, there are some downsides to this antique technology. Unlike e-mail, we can't really stop fax spam. There's no spam filter.

Since your faxes arrive vial e-mail all from the fax service provider, you cant block the fax company or you would block all faxes going into your inbox.

One of the ways we fight fax spam is to block all traffic from about 35 countries. (Russia, China, North Korea, etc.) Also, we block individual numbers that show higher than expected traffic. But that's is an inexact science.

If your fax number is all spammed up then the only real fix is to get a new number. Of course, that would be inconvenient, at best. Here's the best fix for that.

Sign up for a new e-mail fax account.

For a few months, you should run both numbers. During that time you start the migration, website and literature updates and notices to customers and suppliers.

Then, you can delete the bad fax number. Yes, it's a lot of work, but your productivity will eventually improve.
We see this done often.

At our offices, we see a lot of variations to the standard fax machine usage. With the combo printer / scan / fax machines there's a lot of ways the machines are utilized. Sometimes, it's just easier to send a fax, than to scan, file then e-mail a small document.

Also, lot's of medical and government offices will only take faxes. So, faxing will be aroung for a while. However, for reciving faxes, it's always best to receive a clean PDF copy of the document. It can be renamed, filed away, and will be easy to attach to an e-mail or upload link whenever necessary.