Black fax facts for kids
A black fax is a type of prank sent through a fax machine. It's a fax message that looks like one or more pages completely filled with black ink. The person sending it usually wants to use up all the ink, toner, or special paper in the other person's fax machine. This costs the receiver money and stops them from using their own machine for a while. It's a bit like a computer denial of service attack, where someone tries to stop a computer from working normally. Fax machines are very good at compressing solid black images, so a short fax call can still produce many black pages.
How Black Faxes Are Used
Black faxes have been used as simple pranks. They can also be used to annoy people who send lots of unwanted faxes, sometimes called "junk faxes."
A basic black fax can be made even more tricky by creating a black fax attack. Imagine taking one or more sheets of paper and taping them together end-to-end. Then, you feed this long loop of paper halfway into your fax machine. This creates an endless loop that keeps cycling through the machine. You can use solid black pages, or even pages with repeating images. This means the receiver's fax machine will keep printing these pages until it runs out of toner or paper!
A Little Bit of History
In the past, black faxes could cause big problems for companies. But today, many large companies use computer-based fax systems. This means faxes are often received as digital files on a computer instead of being printed right away. So, a black fax might not cause as much trouble for them.
However, computers can also be used to send faxes. This opens up new ways for these pranks. A special computer program could create hundreds of pages of pure black images. Or it could make many pages that look important but are just full of black ink. These can be sent very quickly to a target fax machine, making it hard to stop.
Black faxes and fax loops are similar to an older prank called lace cards. Both ideas aim to use up someone else's supplies or time in a playful way.
See Also
- Zip bomb
- Denial-of-service attack
- List of practical joke topics
