http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a7K_I.ifMcEA&refer=home
I read this story about "iclones", fake iphones being knocked off and sold in Asia because Apple is not selling them there yet. In an effort to fight back Apple has "opened the phones" (so to speak) by publishing an email address where tipsters can report the fakes: counterfeit@apple.com .. Only problem.. how many people in Asia can correctly spell or say "counterfeit" ... Oooops!
If Apple was smart they would activate the obvious misspellings of counterfeit@apple.com such as 'counterfiet', counterfit' etc etc. to relay mail to the correct location... Then again if Apple was really smart, they would have used fake@apple.com , police@apple.com or numbers which translate easier such as 911@apple.com
It's hard to stop the fraudsters if you don't bring a gameplan that works.
Or they could just use a IDN for this , because we all know how difficult it would be to spell counterfeit in chinese of Japanese if the shoe was on the other foot.
Posted by: IDN ebook | September 11, 2007 at 01:17 PM
" Reward@apple.com "
.....................Hmmmmmmmmm
Ed - Michigan
Posted by: Ed - Michigan | September 11, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Misspellings of a generic keyword...sounds like a domain strategy:.)
Posted by: Todd Mintz | September 11, 2007 at 01:46 PM
>Only problem.. how many people in Asia can correctly spell or say >"counterfeit" ... Oooops!
Your getting there, Frank!
How about 假劣 ? :)
Posted by: Drewbert | September 11, 2007 at 01:48 PM
This helps describe the need for further IDN development. Apple should have bought the IDN's, say 蘋果.com or 蘋果.cn, which I think means "Apple" in Traditional Chinese (for Taiwan), and used an address such as 911@蘋果.com. I believe Unicode characters cannot be used in front of the "@" sign yet in emails, but at least the domain can be handled correctly.
Posted by: Conor Neu | September 11, 2007 at 04:08 PM
Epiphany anybody ?
Posted by: IDNebook.com | September 11, 2007 at 06:25 PM