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Timey16 t1_ja4taqh wrote

Reply to comment by Loki-L in German minister warns of ‘massive’ danger from Russian hackers | Nancy Faeser says Ukraine war has exacerbated German cybersecurity concerns by misana123

I'm gonna be real with you, I am German, I do consider our administration behind the time.

But in my 30 years of life I have never even SEEN a fax machine... IDK maybe it's because I'm from the East of Germany so our region just skipped the Fax generation in it's entirety and went straight to the internet.

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Loki-L t1_ja4xjgb wrote

I am German too and while I admit that some parts of government especially on the local level can sometimes be not nearly as bad as we all love to say, at other times things are really, really bad.

Anything to do with health care makes it even worse. Having had to work with public and private organization during the height of Corona has shown me just how bad things can be.

But you are right, fax-machines are slowly losing their importance. Nowadays it is often something as high tech as a PDF of a document that was written on a computer, printed out, signed and scanned back into a computer and then forwarded by mail.

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KingXavierRodriguez t1_ja7850n wrote

I've seen and used a fax machine from the 90s - 2010s.

I can't remember using a fax machine after covid. Just my anecdote from America.

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Alcobob t1_jaby700 wrote

Hi, I'm an IT guy for a local municipality:

We operate FAX machines. Mostly advertisements arrive these days, but also offers for contracts.

The reason why FAX machines were so widely used is because they offer a unique combination of factors. Those factors are:

  • They are fast
  • They are secure/secret (*)
  • They are valid for contracts

(*) Not really, but they were defined as secure/secret during a time when it was illegal to wiretap telephone lines without approval by a judge.

No modern tech offers the same combination. For example E-Mails are transmitted unencrypted most of the times and as we know since the Snowden leaks, everything going over the internet is intercepted and read if it isn't encrypted.

DE-Mail was designed to fix that problem, but since it wasn't widely adopted it is dying a slow death. The Telekom shut their DE-mail service down last year.

One huge chance that might make a difference is the new electronic ID-card. You can use it to file your taxes, and i wouldn't be surprised if way more will happen with it later.

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