I received this rather suspicious message on my mobile phone yesterday.

通知:为提高公司知名度，京华公司特举办全球手机号码抽奖活动。您获得8万美元。请速与 XXXXXXXXXXX 王先生联系。

For those of you who can't read the message, and for those of you who hate Chinese and simple can't be bothered to read and understand what's being said, here's the message translated by yours truly.

"Notice: In order to enhance our company's image and make it more well known, Jinghua Company has held a global mobile phone number lottery. You have won 80000 US dollars. Please contact Mr. Wang at XXXXXXXXXX asap."

Obviously, I blotted out the numbers, because this in all probability is one big scam in which you call the number and a machine registers your phone number and uses it to make international calls all over the world, racking up huge debts. Or I could be just selfish and not want others to get the money. You decide.

The number in question was an international number, and it all sounds totally phony to me for a number of reasons. First off, notice that it's supposed to be a global mobile phone number lottery. I don't know about you, but that's total bullshit if you ask me. Who the hell has that much resources to obtain millions of mobile numbers? And this coming from a company saying it wants to be more well-known (read: it's NOT well known). Now, if Microsoft Corporation were to hold such a thing, there would be a splinter of believability to it all, since everyone knows Microsoft and how huge across the globe it spans. But "Jinghua Company"? Besides, who the hell would give out cold hard cash for free like that? You want to publicise your company? 80000 US dollars will buy you some nice big billboards, and the rest of the money in the money pool could go a long way in TV ads and, who knows, buying over an English Premier League football club or sponsoring their gear so you can splash your company logo all over the club jersey?

Secondly, the message was sent in Chinese. Nothing wrong with that, but if you wanted to publicise about your company, you'd do it in a language in which you'd have the highest chance of having people undestand, right? Sure, China is growing blah blah blah, but English is the key to the world.

Thirdly, if you won a lottery, nobody in his right mind would send you a notification that you won via SMS. Snail mail is infinitely more secure, and security's imperative when it's eighty thousand US dollars you're talking about. The message goes on to say to contact one "Mr. Wang". I mean, what the hell? Now you're giving out names, too?

What a big joke. Only some 3-year old kid would fall for such a dumb scam, except that the only problem is that a 3-year old can't read. Or it could all be true and I really have won 80k US dollars, of course. In that case, would you like to call our dear Mr. Wang for me and arrange to collect the money? I'll give you a quarter of it if you don't get riddled with millions worth of phone bills. Or if you get the money and stay alive.