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With devices such as cell phones, net books and similar internet-ready devices becoming more available and more technologically advanced, internet fax has emerged as an efficient manner to send and receive important documents. Internet fax may allow businesses to save money through a reduction in costs including fax lines, toner, paper, repair and the initial costs of the fax machine and replacement of that machine. Internet fax allows access to important faxes on the go and allows for important faxes to be sent on the road. It also allows greater confidentiality for faxes and is not dependent on the device being turned on.

Before a business can start sending and receiving faxes online, they need to decide upon a service. There are a number of great services out there on the Internet to choose from. These services provide an Internet fax number that allows users to send and receive faxes online. Faxes received can be retrieved on an Internet control panel or at an email address. In order to take full advantage of the internet fax services, a company can use an internet ready device such as a smart phone. Some phones that work well for this purpose are the iPhone, BlackBerry, Droid and the Palm series. Netbooks are another good option. These are compact laptops that provide much of the function of the traditional laptop but they are easier for a person to carry with them.

Internet fax capabilities may allow businesses to save money. With internet fax, a business has the choice to either make a hard copy of a fax or to save it on the device for easy access. Faxing over the Internet enables the business to save substantial amounts of money on printing costs such as paper and toner. Another result of this is that the business has less paperwork to organize. Faxes can be kept and organized electronically allowing for a more streamlined work environment. Businesses also have the option to use internet fax to replace the traditional fax machine entirely. By directing all of their faxes through an online service, a company may not need to expend the money to purchase a fax machine. They also do not have to deal with problems such as the fax machine breaking down, a situation which can be costly both in money and in time.

With third party electronic devices, internet fax allows businesses to become more mobile. Even if an employee is away from the office, they can send and receive faxes through their smart phone. If an employee requires access to certain information from a fax to assist him with potential clients he or she has access to that information on their mobile devices. If a client requests certain information that the employee does not have in their possession, he or she has the power to contact someone who does have the information and get them to fax it to his or her PDA or other mobile device. This expedites the process of getting the necessary information since a company does not have to search for a physical fax page filed away somewhere. This time saved can be essential in business negotiations.

Internet fax allows businesses to control who has access to a document. With PIN code protection to faxes, only those with proper permissions have access to it. With a standard fax machine, documents are not always picked up immediately by those to whom they are sent. In this case, the fax is sitting in the machine and anyone who has access to the machine has access to the fax. In the business world, faxes often contain sensitive information that companies do not want everyone to see. Identity theft is a problem and if someone's personal information was compromised, the time, money and effort to clear everything up may be enormous. Besides this effort, there may be loss of goodwill and trust if the identity of a client is compromised.

Internet fax is a way in which documents can be sent without the use of a fax machine and there are a number of devices, such as cell phones, netbooks, and PDAs, which will allow a business to send and receive faxes on the go. There are numerous benefits for this, but the most significant is the greater mobility that businesses with internet fax service have.