Fax has no technical advantage over other means of sending information over the Internet, using technologies such as email, scanner, and graphics file formats; however, it is extremely simple to use: put the documents to be faxed in a hopper, dial a phone number, and press a button.
Online faxing is still popular as it allows the user to send and receive documents using a secure line without the worry of being hacked, as online faxing services use end-to-end encryption to protect the documents from being hacked.
The traditional method requires a phone line, and only one fax can be sent or received at a time.
Hardcopy is converted to TIFF or PDF data and attached to an e-mail in MIME format.
Because they make use of TCP/IP, Internet Faxes do not incur long-distance transmission costs and reception is verifiable.
Taking advantage of an established LAN/WAN infrastructure, IP fax reduces or eliminates costly connection and transmission fees.
It also means that the document is no longer readable by computer applications, unless optical character recognition methods are used to read the fax image.
In this method, smartphones are used to send and receive fax without the need to have any landline phone or any extra hardware.
Users must install an app on their smartphones or smartwatches and have an active subscription to an online fax service provider.
This technology has many advantages: Early email-to-fax services such as The Phone Company and Digital Chicken were developed in the mid-1990s.
While the needs of computer-to-fax communications are well covered, the simplicity of quickly faxing a handwritten document combined with the advantages of email are not.
This has limited the standard's use, though a system for looking up a fax's email address based on its phone number is under development.