I often hear people complaining about the continued use of fax in the 21st century. No one can accuse me of being an old-tech-hanger-on. I'm usually an early adopter (but not the earliest) of new tech. But there are some nice features and use-cases of fax that still keep it relevant in the 21st century.
Privacy
Fax is considerably more private than email. The default method of fax only leaves a copy with the sender and the receiver (assuming they have an un-hacked fax machine). There are no copies stored on any servers for hackers or state actors to get.
Furthermore, the government (at least in the US) needs a warrant to wire-tap and capture the fax.
Convenience
When you need a hard-copy anyways, it's a lot fewer steps. It automatically pops out!
It's a lot easier on the sending side as well. Making a scanner work on the sending side is also non-trivial. I have two scanners at my home. Both require special driver and software from the manufacturer to be installed on my computer. It's a chore to install and keep them updated. Fax doesn't require a driver.
Downsides of Fax
Faxes do have downsides, but not inherent to their operation. These could be worked around by updating the standards:
- No authentication makes it easy to spoof
- There is no encryption by default, which is the same security as voice communication, which is none (that even applies to the trivial cracked cell-phone voice encryption). But you could buy special encrypted fax machines.
In conclusion, fax has it's place in the 21st century, with a few caveats.