The other day I got a bill from a mobile operator. He wrote me that they would get money from me for providing a mobile phone connection. I wasn’t prepared for that at all. Normally mobile phone providers write to me that it is now very, very cheap.
The mobile phone connection was not that cheap. I would never have voluntarily completed something like that, I thought. The mobile operator had even given me a customer number. When I called the hotline, they advised me to resign, which I did immediately.
But how did I get in there? I remember well that I hadn’t signed a mobile phone contract in the past few months. But was that really me? Did someone perhaps sign such a contract in my name? I always hear a lot about identity theft. I recently read a shocking report in the “Welt am Sonntag” about a certain Christian Hübner. The name had been changed by the editors.
Christian Hübner is a man with different identities. One is his own, the other is stolen. She was stolen from him. It started with a rent deposit agreement that was made out in his name, although he never signed anything, and it’s been going on ever since. Since three years.
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His identity has now been stolen 35 times. He has applied for loans, ordered trips, ordered chocolates, bought dog food, taken out newspaper and Netflix subscriptions and switched electricity providers four times. All organized by some crooks in his name. Of course, he also signed mobile phone contracts.
Have I become a Tillmann Hübner?
Hübner’s life is full of negative surprises. Something is constantly being debited from his account. He constantly has to contradict, cancel, cancel. The real Christian Hübner has to spend his whole life undoing the life of the stolen Christian Hübner.
And what about me now? If I have become a Tillmann Hübner, will I have to constantly cancel any connections? Cancel trips? Have to revoke dog food purchases? I think I would eventually become very jealous of Tillmann Hübner.
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For example, I don’t have a dog, but maybe I’d like to have one. I don’t travel much either. But Tillmann Hübner might. It would totally piss me off to run after my consumer-addicted alter ego and force my boring life on him.
I then found out that I had actually ordered a mobile phone connection several years ago. I hardly used it and then forgot about it. For some reason I never received an invoice for it. I hope Christian Hübner hasn’t had to pay for it in the meantime.
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