Dumb and dumber

If you are resident in Hong Kong, you need a Hong Kong ID card. This piece of plastic with your black and white photograph, date of birth and specially assigned number identifies you as who you say you are. If you know someone's Hong Kong ID number, that means you have access to any number of records - if you match it up with their address, that means you probably can open bank accounts under their name. For transactions carried out over the phone, you are sometimes asked to give your Hong Kong ID number instead of any other password.

I came back from work on Saturday night at 10pm and found I had a letter from my phone company saying I'd added a new phone number to my account. Since I have only one phone number I was very surprised at this letter. I called the phone company and the lady there said I'd applied over the phone at 7pm on a day I knew I had been out of the country.
"Call the police," Chinese Sad Associate said, when I called her afterwards to relay the puzzling story. This person, whoever it was, had to have my Hong Kong ID number to have opened an account in my name. This was fraud.

I got angry. I called the number that had been added on to my account (BIG MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: DO NOT CALL STRANGERS, EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON TO) and left a searingly angry voicemail. Then I went to the police station.

"He called you?" The policeman asked as he was inputting in my details.
"No. I called him," I said, then felt my phone ring. The Bad Person had called back, leaving a message saying he did not know who I was, and he did not understand why I was angry at him.
"Should I call him back?" I asked.
"No, you should let the detective do that. You don't want to alert him, if you haven't done so already," the policeman said.

I had to go to a different police station to get hold of the detective assigned to my case. The detective shook his head when I told him I'd left the Bad Person a message, and that he'd called me back.
"Aiya, of course, he would call you back! I would call you back if you left me an angry message!" he said. "Let me call him."
The detective painstakingly wrote down my statement - he pressed into the paper so hard that there were marks left on the next page - and I signed the statement.
"I think it is a mistake of the phone company," he said. "You shouldn't worry about it. Maybe when they input new details of a customer they make mistakes. I have come across cases like this before. So you shouldn't worry too much."

I came home and locked and bolted the door. Whoever it is has my home address too. (BIG MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE PERSONAL SECURITY ISSUES, SORT THEM OUT A.S.A.P. OTHERWISE SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES). I called back Chinese Sad Associate who had managed to work herself up into a fine mood over what was happening. She was breathing steam.
"We should go back to the police station now," she said, furiously. "I can't believe he didn't call the guy who called you straight away! I want to go to the police station to yell at him!"
"I don't want to yell at a detective," I said, "and I'm quite tired."
This was true. It was past midnight. Chinese Sad Associate told me to cancel my credit cards as this person could now have access to their details. This had not occurred to me, and it worried me a great deal. By the time I finished calling the card companies, it was 1.30 am. In the middle of another conversation with Chinese Sad Associate, I felt my phone ring again. It was the Bad Person.
"What shall I do? This guy is trying to contact me again," I asked Chinese Sad Associate.
"Call the detective and make him call the guy immediately! If he doesn't make the call, then we should go to the police station and yell at him!" she said. So I called the detective and asked him to call the mysterious person immediately.

The detective called me back after almost 40 minutes.
"I think it was a mistake of the phone company," he said. "This man has an old phone which has a very similar number to yours and he asked to add that to his account by fax. So I think it is the phone company's fault. You don't have to worry about it. I will check with the phone company and find out."
So I have no credit cards for this week, for nothing. And I've abused this poor man, whoever he is, for no reason and even thought of him as a Bad Person. I felt guilty and stupid. But I felt terribly relieved - at least I know now that I am safe. There is no Bad Person out there misusing my personal information and no Bad Person is going to come to my house thanks to the address he must have also picked up.
"You should write to the police and complain," Chinese Sad Associate said. "The detective should have called that person immediately then you wouldn't have had to cut your cards. And I lost a chance to yell at someone. Damn it, I needed to yell at someone this week."

I'm going to write a letter to the phone company. They're the Bad ones.