Abstract: A method and system for confidential transmissions of documents over existing telephone communications lines is disclosed that generates encrypted documents suitable for reception by a facsimile machine. The encrypted document can be received by a facsimile device (60) at a distant location and decrypted by its intended recipient with the use of a unique encryptogram (38). The encrypted document can be recognized by existing optical character recognition systems and then modified to minimize the number of characters errors. The original text document is processed to create a unique character set prior to transmission and processed again at the receiving end to convert it into its original plain language format.