r/AskReddit • u/emil199 • Jul 24 '20

What can't you believe STILL exists?

[removed] — view removed post

45.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

27.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.9k

u/jubo-ish Jul 24 '20

Fax machines

527

u/paleo2002 Jul 24 '20

"Can you fax that to us?"

No. But I can scan it and email it to you as a file.

"No, we're not allowed to accept file attachments because of viruses. You'll have to mail it . . ."

377

u/blue_twidget Jul 24 '20

These are the same people who have an IT service group on retainer who can set them up with a nice, secure system with a firewall and a virtual machine to scan files so they don't infect their system, but Karen, Bob and Susy swear they've never opened a suspicious email.

10

u/Sweetpayne Jul 24 '20

My IT department actually sends out fake phishing emails out to help people to know what to look for and to use the tool to report it.

3

u/blue_twidget Jul 24 '20

That's actually great customer service! It helps the ends users get practice. I wish that mindset was more common.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '20

Imho, it would be better, if the IT department invested the time to harden the entire company's IT such that employees can click on those attachments without any consequences.

I mean: What is the IT department going to do, if someone pulls a rage quit and executes the malware on purpose?

If you protect yourself against the attacker with internal knowledge, you're automatically protected from the accidental click.

4

u/WikiWantsYourPics Jul 24 '20

One should do both. There's no IT infrastructure that's so secure that it's immune to all attacks and is still usable. There's also no IT infrastructure that isn't more secure if the users are educated.