Mystery App Answers the Phone

I was in my office using my dual G5 PowerMac when my wife called on the home phone. I picked up the phone just after the fourth ring and the answering machine picked up. It let go; but then, as we started to speak, our voices were shredded by a high-pitched tone. Somewhere, a PC fax modem had answered the call, looking for incoming faxes.

The only computer on was the G5, so I disconnected the phone chord to it. Sure enough, the screeching went away.

After we talked, I went back to find out why the G5 had answered the phone. While I had copies of Faxstf (and Faxstf X) loaded on the machine, neither of them had been running at the time. I launched each one and set preferences that would tell the modem not to pick up and then used my cell phone to call the home phone to see if the modem would still answer. It did. Since I wasn’t really using that software, I dragged both copies to the Trash, searched for and deleted the preference files, and then tried the modem again. It still answered. Something else had to be driving the modem.

Pulling up System Preferences, I found the problem. Under “Printers and Fax”, the OS X setting told the modem to receive faxes and pick up after four rings. I disabled the “Receive Fax” function and tried the modem again. This time it didn’t answer.

What’s puzzling about that was I thought I’d had the G5 PM hooked up to the phoneline for some time. Guess not.