[ExI] due diligence

[Adrian Tymes]

Google the lady's name, or choice phrases from it.

Check Snopes.com, of course, but that doesn't get everything.

And there are reverse lookup sites that give you lots of info for
money, but their free preview can be used to confirm that a
person with that name probably lives or recently lived in that
area.  They tend to be focused in the US, but I suspect that
"[name] Britain" might find some such services for the UK,
along with other potentially corroborating hits - assuming she
does exist and is there.  (Conversely, a lack of relevant hits
would suggest she is not there.)

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 11:04 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Data hipsters, do offer me please a suggestion or two.  I have a friend who
> has money, doesn’t use the internet a lot, almost never for anything other
> than business-related stuff.  Recently he read somewhere an inspiring
> something (details intentionally omitted) that causes him to want to do a
> charitable act for the author, enough to make a real difference in this
> person’s life.  The only relevant details: this benefactor is happily
> married for a long time, fifty-something, American, several children,
> upstanding sort, honest, kind and good, etc.  The recipient is
> twenty-something, single, have no idea what she looks like and he doesn’t
> care, completely irrelevant for what he wants to offer.  The benefactor
> wants exactly NOTHING in return, nothing.
>
>
>
> In any case, this is a situation in desperate need of some basic due
> diligence, the same way one would investigate before making any investment.
> The recipient is in Britain somewhere.  Do you lads have anything analogous
> to our Spokeo for instance, something to do some top-level spot checking?
> It might be as simple as reverse-lookup of an address, to see that Jane Ayre
> (pseudonym) lives there, rather than Mohammad M. Mohammad from Nigeria, just
> for starters.  Any other ideas on how to spot check an inspiring internet
> story for truthiness?
>
>
>
> I had to advise my friend that in its current form the plan is 18 molar
> hydro-bad-idea-chloride, an unstable chemical that can decompose rapidly and
> spontaneously when mixed with reality, leaving behind nothing but pure
> bad-idea, in a highly toxic environment.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>