Last year I ordered some acid-free paper for printing my thesis, and I provided my delivery and e-mail addresses at work for convenience. But today I received a rather mysterious e-mail from the same company, saying, ‘Dear Mr. Kong, Your order has been confirmed as follows …’ How did this e-mail come about? I haven’t ordered anything from them of late, and when I read through the e-mail in more detail, the order was intended for delivery and billing to the animal house of my research institute. That’s clearly none of my business! The secretary at my department kindly followed up the matter for me. She then found out that the animal house did place that order, but the confirmation was sent to me out of convenience since the company had already got my e-mail address at work and/or thought that I was in charge. How clever … Other people have recently received another bizarre bill, albeit a lot more malicious. Television and radio broadcasts do not come free in Germany, and an authority is...