Email-to-fax security risks to know

Risk 1: Copies multiply

Every fax sent by email leaves a copy in your sent folder. Every fax received by email lands in an inbox, then often syncs to a phone, a tablet and a laptop. Mail servers keep backups. Over time, sensitive pages end up in more places than anyone can track or delete, which complicates retention policies and breach reviews.

It also makes deletion unreliable. Removing a fax from one inbox does not remove it from the copies on other devices or in server backups.

Risk 3: Account takeover

If your email password is phished or reused, the attacker gets your received faxes too, often years of them. They can also search the mailbox for words such as fax, invoice or medical records. Two-factor authentication on email helps, but many shared office mailboxes still use a single password.

Former employees are another gap. If a shared mailbox password is not changed when someone leaves, they may still be able to read incoming faxes.

A safer way to send and receive

emailto-fax.com recommends FaxToFax.com, which takes a different approach. It does not offer email-to-fax or fax-to-email at all. You work in a secure browser account instead:

1. Save the file you would have emailed as a PDF, PNG or JPG.
2. Sign in from any browser and upload it to a new fax.
3. Enter and confirm the number, then send and keep the delivery receipt.

• Passwordless sign-in with a one-time code, plus two-step verification
• Each fax number confirmed before you send
• Received faxes in a private encrypted inbox, never emailed
• Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest
• Append-only audit log of views, downloads and sends
• Retention controls that purge old faxes automatically