• nfh@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Fax is commonly used at least in the US because it has regulatory recognition as a secure means of transferring information, it’s highly interoperable, and it doesn’t really have a successor that has caused the network effect to die out entirely.

    11% seems slightly higher than I’d expect, but not crazy. Contracts, medical records, interactions with the government are all good reasons to need to send or receive one occasionally. That about 1 in 10 households did last year? Makes some sense.

    • Hawke@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Seems crazy to me. I can’t imagine that 1 in 10 household even have fax machines. All the stuff you mention is business and medical stuff. Nobody faxes in their medical requests from home.

        • Hawke@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Nah. They might do it from work or maybe by email gateway.

          Hell it’s only even possible for the 27% of homes that still have a landline. There’s just no way.

          • PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            There are a lot of people with old technology in their home that still gets used. Fax is still needed for lots of medical things, and not everyone has an office to go to.

            Think retired people taking care of sick family members.

            • Hawke@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Nah. It’s got a big fat [citation needed] from me.

              10% of people? Sure I’d believe that 10 % of people have transferred data using fax technology at least once in the past year or something. But 10% of households, and you can’t count email to-fax gateways?

              No way.

              • PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                The citation is in the article which is from a Consumer Reports study. In case you don’t know, they’re very trustworthy.

                I’m not attempting to convince you that the figure is accurate because I don’t need to that. I’m attempting to get you to understand that a big portion of the population of the USA are just making do with what they have.