"Dying Traditions of boomers"

[RX8]

Timeshares are on the way out, yet the timeshare industry seems to be growing and has higher and higher sales volume every year.

I was late to the timeshare thingy. Not sure how timesharing was “back in the day” but I suspect that it was simpler with people using the weeks that they owned. They probably loved their week and therefore were happy owners. Today, it is much more complicated with points based systems, competition for popular weeks, not enough points for what they need, fees upon fees, scams right and left, and constant pressure to buy more. Maybe I am wrong but with all that I think that there are many more unhappy timeshare owners today than ever before.

 

[tombanjo]

Fax is and will continue to be more secure than email. That being said, my company faxes are virtual and sent via email.

 

[jp10558]

The old saying. If something works, don't fix it?

For the most part, with modern software, fax works just like email for most senders and recipients.

This just isn't true, I've never had fax work as easily or reliably as e-mail, and neither has anyone I know. The only times it's been reliable has been using a physical fax machine, which again, still fails too frequently IMO over VoIP lines, so now you've got to go to the last place that still has a POTS line (I really thought those had gone away) and charges to use their fax machine. What's worse is that e-mail has options to secure it in ways fax does not.

 

[jp10558]

Fax is and will continue to be more secure than email. That being said, my company faxes are virtual and sent via email.

Fax is in no way more secure than e-mail. Once it's doing VOIP over the Internet, you have no more idea how secure or not the transmission is than an e-mail. Fax itself has 0 security. In fact, you can and people used to just tap the old phoneline and read the faxes. The "security" was you had to get into a place to tap the phone line you were interested in, but again, probably close to 0.1% of phone calls go over traditional phone lines today. And a large percentage aren't on isolated carrier networks either, but straight up VOIP on the Internet.

Worse, it's about as easy to "steal" a phone number as an e-mail address and just receive the faxes directly.

If you care about security, there's no standard I'm aware of to secure fax at all. E-mail has SMIME and PGP standards that can be used so that even if you intercept the e-mail or steal the credentials or hack the e-mail server, you can't read the messages without the local keys on the recipients computer.

 

[jp10558]

I was late to the timeshare thingy. Not sure how timesharing was “back in the day” but I suspect that it was simpler with people using the weeks that they owned. They probably loved their week and therefore were happy owners. Today, it is much more complicated with points based systems, competition for popular weeks, not enough points for what they need, fees upon fees, scams right and left, and constant pressure to buy more. Maybe I am wrong but with all that I think that there are many more unhappy timeshare owners today than ever before.

I wonder how many happy owners of mud weeks and off season weeks there were back in the day... I do think lots of the rental or lack of availability issues don't exist with fixed weeks but clearly most people wanted flexibility. I know there's way less places I'd want to lock in to going every year the same week than I'd like to go one time, and TBH I wouldn't have known the places I'd want to go every year without trying them out via non-committal systems. That said, the current systems really do allow them to (and they do) confuse people way more about what they might be buying.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

The old saying. If something works, don't fix it?

For the most part, with modern software, fax works just like email for most senders and recipients.

Yeah, I mean most courts are now using e-filing platforms, many/most are paperless depending on jurisdiction including the federal courts. Nobody is printing the faxes anymore, it's all virtual, the idea that everyone needs to fax to a phone number when it's virtual on both ends 99 percent of the time is just silly. It'll die eventually, it's just very slow.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Fax is and will continue to be more secure than email. That being said, my company faxes are virtual and sent via email.

Regular unencrypted email, maybe? But there are plenty of other secure electronic methods for transmitting documents that are in widespread use, easy to use, and more efficient than faxing.

 

[callwill]

Fax machines seem to be de rigueur for insurance companies. My wife was an independent provider for a multitude of insurance companies and most all of her claims had to be faxed.

 

[jorcus]

Fax is in no way more secure than e-mail. Once it's doing VOIP over the Internet, you have no more idea how secure or not the transmission is than an e-mail. Fax itself has 0 security. In fact, you can and people used to just tap the old phoneline and read the faxes. The "security" was you had to get into a place to tap the phone line you were interested in, but again, probably close to 0.1% of phone calls go over traditional phone lines today. And a large percentage aren't on isolated carrier networks either, but straight up VOIP on the Internet.

Worse, it's about as easy to "steal" a phone number as an e-mail address and just receive the faxes directly.

If you care about security, there's no standard I'm aware of to secure fax at all. E-mail has SMIME and PGP standards that can be used so that even if you intercept the e-mail or steal the credentials or hack the e-mail server, you can't read the messages without the local keys on the recipients computer.

I disagree somewhat. In order to send a fax over voip you need a conversion device (ATA) that registers to a border gateway somewhere. That (ATA) has to be licensed and recognized by the the border gateway which in turn places the call or fax onto the public service telephone network (PSTN). Once it is on the pstn it is then directed to the other exchange. After that it could go to a plain old telephone line (pots) or to another voip gateway then to another ATA which converts the signal again to pots to deliver the fax. That's a lot of hoops to jump through and why it can be a pain to get 2 fax's to talk to each other theses days.

Security wise using voip you could try to steal the password to register your ATA to the border gateway. They are long and complicated so that is not easy and will knock the the one you stole off line so it would be noticed. You could try to intercept the message some place while it is still on the internet using Wire Shark or similar tool, but you need to get to place where you can isolate what you are looking for in the sea of data that is coming down the pipes. A pots line could be tapped using a mirror device but most fraud is performed overseas so physical access tapping is less common. Tapping a T1 used for a fax signal would be toughest of all but could be done with physical access and a mirror device I think.

To be honest in 20 years of working in telecom I don't think I ever ran into a case of fax intercept fraud. The biggest fraud to watch out for was hacking into a system to make calls to phone numbers in the Caribbean at night, running up big phone bills.

 

[jp10558]

I disagree somewhat. In order to send a fax over voip you need a conversion device (ATA) that registers to a border gateway somewhere. That (ATA) has to be licensed and recognized by the the border gateway which in turn places the call or fax onto the public service telephone network (PSTN). Once it is on the pstn it is then directed to the other exchange. After that it could go to a plain old telephone line (pots) or to another voip gateway then to another ATA which converts the signal again to pots to deliver the fax. That's a lot of hoops to jump through and why it can be a pain to get 2 fax's to talk to each other theses days.

Security wise using voip you could try to steal the password to register your ATA to the border gateway. They are long and complicated so that is not easy and will knock the the one you stole off line so it would be noticed. You could try to intercept the message some place while it is still on the internet using Wire Shark or similar tool, but you need to get to place where you can isolate what you are looking for in the sea of data that is coming down the pipes.

This is the same "protection" e-mails have however.

A pots line could be tapped using a mirror device but most fraud is performed overseas so physical access tapping is less common. Tapping a T1 used for a fax signal would be toughest of all but could be done with physical access and a mirror device I think.

To be honest in 20 years of working in telecom I don't think I ever ran into a case of fax intercept fraud. The biggest fraud to watch out for was hacking into a system to make calls to phone numbers in the Caribbean at night, running up big phone bills.

I notice you don't address "simjacking" or just taking over a phone number. This is also why SMS isn't the best 2FA. I'll also point out fraudulent numbers is marginally more easy to pull off than fake e-mail addresses in that the phone number itself has no information anymore whereas most trainings will tell you to expect a @gmail.com address to not likely be a doctors office.

I'm actually more concerned about passive information leakage, which again both e-mail and faxes are susceptible to. My main argument about faxes is for most people it leads them to do obviously risky things of using "free fax websites" where you're actively giving a third party the data because you have no other way to send a fax, or handing it over into a small business which probably doesn't do anything nefarious but also probably has no actual information handling policies regarding what the fax machine might save or leaving it laying around for anyone to read or steal.

 

[pedro47]

Baby Boomers cared about this country the United States of America and protecting freedom.

 

[easyrider]

Maybe I am wrong but with all that I think that there are many more unhappy timeshare owners today than ever before.

I'm sure you are right, but even so, some of the unhappiest timeshare owners I know have good times at their timeshares. Some people are happiest when they have something to complain about.

Bill

 

[easyrider]

The one thing I miss are the Christmas Cards. We use to get enough cards to cover a wall. Most were pictures of families and then their kids having families. Our cards were usually of our travels. Many companies we were associated with sent personalized cards, gift certificates and poinsettias. Over the years the cards have went from easily over 60 to maybe 10 or less. While writing this it did occur to me that we stopped sending out Christmas cards and maybe that's why we aren't getting any. I'm not sure I care , lol.

Bill

 

[jp10558]

The one thing I miss are the Christmas Cards. We use to get enough cards to cover a wall. Most were pictures of families and then their kids having families. Our cards were usually of our travels. Many companies we were associated with sent personalized cards, gift certificates and poinsettias. Over the years the cards have went from easily over 60 to maybe 10 or less. While writing this it did occur to me that we stopped sending out Christmas cards and maybe that's why we aren't getting any. I'm not sure I care , lol.

Bill

Yea, sending out christmas cards is a real PITA and costs a surprising amount now adays if you want them to be custom. And if you're not doing your own picture / design, then TBF I don't see the point at all.

And I think that is the underlying reason. You don't need to wait to send a short message, e-mail or text does it for free whenever. You don't need to mail a card with a picture of your family, everyone posts them on social media (Which kind of sucks for me as I don't do Facebook etc so don't see the pictures). You can also text or email them to people like me. So there's no reason anymore...

 

[HitchHiker71]

I'm sure you are right, but even so, some of the unhappiest timeshare owners I know have good times at their timeshares. Some people are happiest when they have something to complain about.

Bill

For the majority of timeshare owners that I personally know, they are generally happy with their timeshare vacations. As the Wyndham forum moderator - the general consensus is that owners dislike timeshare sales people - which seem to rank worse than used car sales people consistently - however the owners are generally happy with the timeshare operations side of the business - they like the resorts and are fairly happy with the resort management and resort operations/upkeep/services. Stay away from the owner updates/sales side of things if you want to enjoy your ownerships.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[HitchHiker71]

This is the same "protection" e-mails have however.

Actually in addition to email body public/private key encryption (S/MIME or PGP) and secure email gateway services like MimeCast or Proofpoint for example, 2024 stats indicate that 99% of email transfer uses TLS encryption. So the point to point transport layer from the source to the destination SMTP gateway itself is also encrypted using 256 bit AES encryption.


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[ScoopKona]

Fax is and will continue to be more secure than email. That being said, my company faxes are virtual and sent via email.

I wouldn't be so sure about that:

Fax machines can be hacked. It’s possible to send a malicious script to a fax machine, disguised as an image or printable text file. When the fax machine executes that script, it enables the criminal to access any networks or devices the fax machine is connected to.

Fax vs email: Which is more secure?

Is fax more secure than email? Fax isn’t without its security concerns. But, when compared to email, here’s why it has a leg up in regards to security.

telnyx.com

And there have been several instances where medical data has been breached through the fax machine.

 

[jp10558]

Actually in addition to email body public/private key encryption (S/MIME or PGP) and secure email gateway services like MimeCast or Proofpoint for example, 2024 stats indicate that 99% of email transfer uses TLS encryption. So the point to point transport layer from the source to the destination SMTP gateway itself is also encrypted using 256 bit AES encryption.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, but that is effectively the same IMO as the VOIP stuff - I'm assuming the ASA connections are essentially like or actually encrypted transport. If the mails aren't encrypted at rest by a user controlled key, they're effectively also vulnerable to being stolen from the mail servers with the "right kind of hack", which ... depending on the situation is more or less realistic. See the MS hacks for state department e-mails from their govcloud.

 

[jp10558]

For the majority of timeshare owners that I personally know, they are generally happy with their timeshare vacations. As the Wyndham forum moderator - the general consensus is that owners dislike timeshare sales people - which seem to rank worse than used car sales people consistently - however the owners are generally happy with the timeshare operations side of the business - they like the resorts and are fairly happy with the resort management and resort operations/upkeep/services. Stay away from the owner updates/sales side of things if you want to enjoy your ownerships.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If only the "parking pass" people weren't sometimes a PITA.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Yes, but that is effectively the same IMO as the VOIP stuff - I'm assuming the ASA connections are essentially like or actually encrypted transport. If the mails aren't encrypted at rest by a user controlled key, they're effectively also vulnerable to being stolen from the mail servers with the "right kind of hack", which ... depending on the situation is more or less realistic. See the MS hacks for state department e-mails from their govcloud.

The vast majority of VOIP sessions initiate TLS/SRTP at the transport/network layer just like the vast majority of email sessions initiate TLS/SSL at the transport/network layer. Most VOIP phones also support SIP - and use SIP over TLS/SRTP. TLS/SRTP encrypts at the transport layer and SIP provides end-to-end session encryption for the VOIP call provided both devices support SIP.

 

[dioxide45]

as passionate as people are about the subject, it seems that fax is still pretty important.

 

[pedro47]

We missed mailing Christmas cards but not the higher price of a postage stamp to mail the cards.

 

[jp10558]

The vast majority of VOIP sessions initiate TLS/SRTP at the transport/network layer just like the vast majority of email sessions initiate TLS/SSL at the transport/network layer.

I'm just not really sure I trust transport layer encryption really because you are assuming there's no odd proxying, no whoopsie this leg wasn't encrypted, and none of the transport providers are spying on you or hacked.

Most VOIP phones also support SIP - and use SIP over TLS/SRTP. TLS/SRTP encrypts at the transport layer and SIP provides end-to-end session encryption for the VOIP call provided both devices support SIP.

I have to imagine this isn't supported for most existing FAX machines, and IDK if the software based FAXs use VOIP at all necessarily. The software could take HTTP (or HTTPS) of the PDF of the FAX data and then generate the fax at their central point (again, a good place to tap if you want to / can) out to the POTS for interchange.

Now, my point isn't that all of the above doesn't exist, my point is anything less than good E2E is no guarantee of any security. All of the above generally mean IMO that an unencrypted E-Mail with an attached PDF is practically as secure as a FAX in the modern world - they have similar protections in transport, and similar protections at rest.

 

[emeryjre]

Docusign became a large successful corporation providing an alternative to fax machines
I use the free version to have timeshare renters sign rental documents and complete a timeshare rental transaction
It has a short learning curve to figure out the software
My renters have generally been very happy with the process
I have not used a fax machine to finish any type of transaction in the last 25 years

 

[Brett]

Docusign became a large successful corporation providing an alternative to fax machines
I use the free version to have timeshare renters sign rental documents and complete a timeshare rental transaction
It has a short learning curve to figure out the software
My renters have generally been very happy with the process
I have not used a fax machine to finish any type of transaction in the last 25 years

Docusign

I've not used a fax machine in the past 30 years