I get loads of email, looking to sell me a replica of a Rolex watch, an impossibly low-interest loan and a truckload of Viagra, but I also get a selection of unsolicited email ads from legitimate concerns, some of which are pretty interesting. One email I received recently offered the possibility of setting up a dedicated fax line in Hong Kong. The faxes my Hong Kong fax number received would be converted to TIFF files and then emailed back to me. Similarly, I could have a Hong Kong telephone number which forwarded to my company's phone line, for which I would paid a fee plus international dialing rates.

Similar deals for fax and phone line services were offered for other Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and ShenZhen. The email was trawling for interest in having the appearance of a Chinese company, without actually having one.

It's the old tablecloth trick, only this time it's with faxes, phone numbers, off-the-shelf software packages, international telephone services and email. The tablecloth reads mainland China. Pull it off with a snap of the wrist, and all the plates, forks and glasses stay in place on the table, with only minor trembling to give them away.

This particular email was sent by a Hong Kong company which specializes in fax-spam. That's right, the old-fashioned unsolicited faxes which used to clog our fax machines and was the direct pre-cursor to today's email spam. If you'd like that service, they offer accessible lists of fax numbers from thousands of companies in Taiwan, Singapore, China and more. In fact, they claim to have the fax numbers of over 800,000 Chinese companies, so this is a fax-spam outlet, which is branching out.

Now, presuming this could all be pulled off, and that they didn't haphazardly send an email to a government bureaucrat, who could pull the plug on the whole thing, I wondered who would find this interesting. It wouldn't do me personally any good to have a fake storefront on the Chinese business scene, but I live in a town where there are a lot of Chinese business people. They speak, read and write the various languages involved. They have business skills and knowledge of the culture. They could easily find this to be a pretty good set-up, as would people worldwide. No people and culture has spread throughout the world and set up businesses everywhere like the Chinese.

So, whether or not this particular concern is legitimate, the truth is: It's technologically possible. In fact, it's technologically a walk in the park. So, the age of setting up a Chinese storefront or a Latvian storefront or a Nigerian storefront is close at hand.

Now, let's get to the rest of us. Should we care if we think we're calling a Chinese company, and it turns out to be people in another country? Is it any different from our calling directory assistance every day and realizing that we're talking to a person in India? And that this person is working for an Indian company only contracted to provide the service? At what point do we get to say, "Hey, I thought you were a store down on Main Street?" You've got to admit, this is all a bit disorienting.

It used to be that a business had to be brick and mortar. That you could see the people. That you could test its reputation. Personally establish trust with an individual inside the walls of the business. But all that's changed, and we all know it. (When was the last time you could call your local bank? Sure, you can access all sorts of information and if you manage to get a person to talk to, you don't know where they are. The notion that you can get a person actually at your local branch just ten blocks from your house is one we've all given up on.)

So, while we've all spent the last decade, adjusting to these digital storefronts of commerce, we've kind of been set up. We may not like it, but we trust that the whole scheme works.

But now that the proposition has turned international in nature, the only question is: Will it?

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.

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