Free Fax Number

I am not a big fax user, but occasionally I have contacts who want to fax me something - a drawing, or a receipt, or an urgent document. And if they don't have the original in electonic form, and if they don't have a scanner, faxing it is the only solution.



Even if I did have a need to receive a lot of faxes, I would now never buy a fax machine. You can send and receive faxes via your own computer, of course. However, that is never easy for a variety of reasons: you have to have your software switched on to receive and you have to use a non-broadband connection. And, if you have a dedicated fax machine, unless you have a separate fax line, you and your callers face the inevitable uncertainty about whether or not an incoming call is a fax or a voice call.

Digital Messaging are offering an 070... free fax number. Once you have signed up and selected your free 070 number, set up your details, then give the number to all your contacts who are likely to want to fax you. They can then fax the number. The fax is received at Digital Messaging and sent to your email address as an attachment. So, there is no worry about whether your fax software is set to receive or whether your computer is turned on, and no worry about whether there is ink or paper in your fax machine. And certainly not the expense of a dedicated fax line. The cost is paid by the person sending the fax. The number looks like a mobile number and the charges are roughly equivalent to the person making a call to a mobile number.

Although the 070 numbers are free, if you want to pay for a particular number, Digital Messaging can also offer you a choice of 0800, 0845, 0870, 0871 number. They have a huge range of numbers, so the chances are you could select a number to suit your preferences.

This solution really does take the worry out of receiving faxes. If you like this service, why not fax mine to let me know (07050 601067). I would appreciate the feedback.

Free and EASY Email Encryption

For most of us there are a few occasions when we need to make absolutely sure that the emails we send will only be read by the intended recipient: a sensitive email to a friend, a confidential email to a colleague, a business proposal to a company, an email to a professional such as a solicitor or counsellor (see Eprivacy).

On these occasions, we wouldn't dream of writing the sensitive and confidential information on a postcard, and then leaving it around for days on a public table for anyone who came into the room to view. Although we would never do that with hard-copy, we frequently do it with electronic copy. The emails we send are often stored on our computers and the computers of the recipient. And in transit, they are delayed on servers as they pass between machines and could be read by anyone who cared to inspect them. Some companies, as a matter of course, scan the emails sent out by their workforce.

There have been encryption programs around for a number of years. These encode the message, making it virtually (and practically) impossible to read by any snooper. Although ways of securing the privacy of your electronic communication have been around for sometime, they have not had the successful take up that they ought to have, for one or more of four main reasons. Some may have been too expensive. Some may have been too technical for the average user, involving an installation of software followed by the creation of encryption keys. Some of the 'easier' ones may have had weak encryption.

However, perhaps by far the biggest weakness is that many of them required the recipient of the email to have similar software installed in their machines if they were to decrypt and read the message. "Excuse me, I am going to send you a confidential encrypted email, and oh, by the way, you need to go to http://www.downloadthissoftwareandistallit.com/, download and install the software and create the encryption keys, and then you will be able to read my message" doesn't feel too user friendly does it.

Stealth Message is a secure messaging system designed for communicating sensitive and confidential information. It protects your privacy, allowing you to communicate in complete confidence with friends and colleagues, and at the same time, overcomes all of the usual objections to usage mentioned above.

Stealth Message requires only that you and the receiver have access to e-mail and a browser.

All you need to do is make sure that you have agreed on a shared code to access messages sent through this system. Contact your friend or colleague prior to sending the message and agree on a secret code that only the two of you will share. You may always change it later. It is recommended you do this by telephone, in person, or through an alias e-mail address. The system does not issue you a new email address and allows you to use your existing e-mail accounts to receive messages.

The system works in a 3-step process.

1. You create your message, encrypt and store it.

2. Recipients are notified by e-mail that there is a confidential message for them stored on the Stealth Message servers.

3. Recipients click a link back to the Stealth Message site, enter a private code, and access the message.

In addition to enabling the easy encryption and decryption of emails, I like the way that Stealth Message has built lots of other security safeguards into the system. And it is all free. For example, in addition to storing encrypted messages anonymously, it allows you to set two useful options for individual emails. You can choose to have an email self-destruct at a particular time, and you can choose to prevent particular emails from being copied and pasted into another document. It also prevents the forwarding of messages, so that you confidential email cannot be forwarded to another computer but remains on the secure Stealth Message server and is only accessible by the intended recipient. It cannot end up stored on someone else's computer.

Single Mobile Number for Life for Free

Whenever my mobile contract comes up for renewal I always shop around looking for a better deal, and sometimes I find one because the competition between mobile networks is so tough. However, changing your mobile phone number can be inconvenient, and for businesses the costs can be huge. Yet most of us are unlikely to have a single mobile number for life.

Now it's possible to have a single mobile number for life. Just get a Digital Messaging 070059 number and let them know which number your calls diverted to. All calls to your 070059 number are then automatically diverted to your handset. When you change handsets or networks, you simply go online and change the number that you want your 070059 number to divert to. It's that simple.

Digital Messaging are happy to give you a free number and divert your calls for free (no charge to you) because they make money on the incoming calls to you. However, your callers aren't ripped off either. They only pay the equivalent of the BT 'K' rate which is comparable to the normal cost of calling a mobile.

And if you frequently leave your mobile turned off, you can also set your free for life mobile number to search you on up to two landline numbers of your choice. And you can also get a free fax number as well!

I have found that one of the major benefits of this service is the control it gives me over where my calls go to. If I want a break from calls I can easily set up a divert to have them forwarded to my office so that a human being rather than an answerphone can stand in for me. One of my friends (a single woman running a business) feels perfectly happy to put her Digital Messaging number on her website and on publicity because she knows that if she is ever hassled, she can simply change the divert of switch it off without interfering with her other numbers.

Why not try it? It really is free so you have nothing to lose.