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Yes, in the United States. Federal rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act require every fax transmission to show the date and time it was sent, the sender's identification, and the telephone number of the sending machine, printed along the top or bottom edge of each transmitted page. The rule applies to every page, not just the cover sheet.
This is general information, not legal advice.
The FCC's rule names three things, and all three must appear along the top or bottom edge of every page of the transmission:
| Required item | What counts |
|---|---|
| Date and time of transmission | Printed by the sending machine, not handwritten in afterward |
| Identification of the sender | The business name, or the individual name if it is a personal fax |
| Telephone number of the sending machine | The actual number the fax went out on, not a general office line |
This is the header line (TTI) your fax machine or online fax service stamps on automatically. If you have never programmed your machine's header, the pages it sends are technically out of compliance. Most machines have a setup menu for exactly this; online services stamp it on your behalf.
It applies to the transmission itself, not to who is sending. A personal fax to your doctor's office is covered the same way as a marketing fax to a thousand offices. In practice, enforcement targets unsolicited marketing faxes, where each non-compliant page can draw a penalty, but the identification rule is written broadly on purpose: it exists so recipients can always see who sent them something and how to reach that sender back.
One thing the rule does not do is guarantee the header is truthful. The header is programmed by the sender, so junk fax operations have been known to put false names and numbers in it. That is part of why the rule was paired with separate prohibitions on unsolicited fax advertising and with the junk-fax opt-out notice requirements. A fake header does not make a fax legal; it just makes the violation harder to trace.
Canada takes a similar approach through its unsolicited telecommunications rules. Fax senders in Canada must identify themselves and provide contact information, and the CRTC's rules on unsolicited faxes require an opt-out mechanism on marketing faxes. If you are sending faxes across the border in either direction, follow the stricter of the two sets of rules. For the sending side, LetterAgent faxes go to US and Canadian fax numbers with the sender identification stamped on each page, and fax is currently in testing with limited availability.
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LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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