Something interesting hit my inbox today. It was a response from an obviously real woman. One easy way to determine the authenticity of a reply is whether it came from a subscription based account. For example if you get something from a person with earthlink.net at the end of their address, chances are it's legit. The vast majority of gmail live.com and yahoo mail accounts are coming from e-whores. I'll cover this more later including more sophisticated ways to avoid them.
She sent a description, her picture, and as luck might have it her real name in the signature. Most of you already know this but google a person's name and you can learn a whole lot about them. That is if they are someone. Well turns out she is. I found out just a while ago that this was an oversight on her part. Sometimes it can be intentional though. There's a great article on why people can't seem to resist putting their real life info on everything that they do online. I'll try to find it later.
Anyways, long story short she works for a government agency. Not surprisingly, her salary information among other interesting details are all available to the public. She was very surprised that I knew her last name when we spoke on the phone. I did tell her how I knew and she didn't seem upset by it just a little surprised.
She is well educated and makes quite a good living. She could be the one!
