I recently received a Google Plus request from someone I didn’t know. We’ll call her Annie for now. I usually dismiss these out of hand. They are commonly spam of two types: someone using a sexy pic of a young woman to lure people in, or some kind of “joke of the day” page designed to get followers. But this one was a bit different. It was a pic of a pretty young girl, but not sexualized, and “her” friends included many security peeps. So being curious as to what was up, I accepted. When someone else commented she had a nice pic, I +1ed the comment.
Within a day or two I got a message. She was interested in getting to know me better. How nice! I responded that I was unavailable (in the relationship kind of way) and have yet to receive a reply, but I’m eager to see if there will be a hook designed to draw me in further.
Using Pipl, I searched for the user’s name from the location in her profile. Nothing. I looked at the Exif headers from the photo. Nothing. I searched Facebook. Nothing resembling that user. I tried to get a list of graduates from the school she says she attended to verify the name. No luck. I did a Google image search. Nada.
The security guy in me thinks this is probably a pretext to something. Why would a young woman with no apparent security interests have predominantly other security guys in her circles? Why would there be no results from Facebook, Pipl or something in the Exif header? Younger people typically leave some kind of digital footprint. Then again, I suppose it could be just a lonely person looking for a friend. Naaah!
I’ll post an update if I find out more. In the mean time, if you have tips for my armchair investigation, please do comment!