# Voicemail service that emails you your messages?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 13, 2003, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850 "2003-12-13T23:29:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2003, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850/1 "2003-12-13T23:29:14Z")

</div>

Anyone know of a voicemail service (for telephone, I mean) that sends you your messages as emails?

I doubt that voice-recognition software is up to the task and I’d think it would be expensive and privacy-wrecking to pay someone to listen to your calls and type them up manually, but how about converting the calls to mp3 files and emailing them to you as email attachments you could listen to (and file and so forth) on your computer?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2003, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850/2 "2003-12-14T01:43:51Z")

</div>

efax does (or did) offer this, it emails you a wav for voicemail or a priority format or tif for faxes

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Satz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@Satz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satz)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2003, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850/3 "2003-12-14T03:21:31Z")

</div>

Asterisk “can” do this if this helps.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2003, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850/4 "2003-12-14T05:33:02Z")

</div>

Hmm, I have the free version of eFax, maybe I should look into their voicemail option. Thanks! I’ll look at Asterisk too.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2003, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voicemail-service-that-emails-you-your-messages/218850/5 "2003-12-14T19:33:26Z")

</div>

**AHunter** , I have the free efax too. If I call the fax number, I can leave a voice message and it gets forwarded to my eFax-registered address. I think, though, that it’s a proprietary audio format which doesn’t work on the Mac, though.

Plus, since we have free acounts, they’re not local numbers (unless you got really, really lucky!).