Thursday, February 28, 2008

International Mistaken Identity

So I received an interesting email today:

Bonjour Nicholas,
J'ai vu que tu avais fait une virée en Iran ?
Je cherche à te joindre parce que je prépare un (tout petit) bouquin sur Wolfeboro et je crois me souvenir que tu avais envoyé des photos aux types de la sécurité. Y aurait-il un bon jour et une bonne heure pour te joindre ?
Bises
Guillemette

Obviously I was a little unsure of what it was about, but it didn't seem like spam so I threw it in babel translator (I assumed it was French because of the Bonjour) and it returned this:

Hello did Nicholas, I see that you had done one transfered in Iran? I seek to join to you because I prepare one (very small) book on Wolfeboro and I believe to remember that you had sent photographs to the types of safety. A good day and a good hour ago to join to you? North winds Guillemette

Now obviously I wasn't the intended recipient of this, but the funny thing is I had a very good idea of who he was looking for. When you search for "Nicholas Kamm" using Google, there are two different people that are predominantly returned, me and an AFP (Agence France Press) photographer with the same name. So I made the safe assumption that this person, probably a French journalist (who signed their email with a news website address), was looking to buy some more photos from Nicholas Kamm the photographer, but when searching online, found this blog with my email address on it.

After coming to these conclusions I returned the email (in english and a roughly translated french version), and she quickly responded apologizing for the misunderstanding. Well apparently google talk, assuming we were friends because of the correspondence, added her and I noticed she was online so we started chatting about the misunderstanding, and she confirmed all of my assumptions! So the moral of the story is open, download all attachments, and respond to every email, regardless of how suspicious or what language it's in because you might make a new French Journalist friend! (And because you're on your work computer and who cares if that gets a virus right?)


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