DarrenBarefoot.com

This week, I was the recipient of eight bizarre emails to a Gmail account I never use or give out. They were all from a numerical email account that looked like this: 2194985492@clarotorpedo.com.br (I changed a couple of digits). Each contained a photo taken with a phone camera, and no accompanying text. All eight photos were pictures of jewelry displayed in sundry shop windows.

Clearly this is just a case of mistaken identity, and I emailed the sender to notify them of their mistake. Still, it’s a little mystery in eight photos. I’m fairly certain they were taken in Brazil because:

• Obviously, the ‘br’ domain on the email address.
• ‘Clarotorpedo’ almost certainly comes from http://www.claroideias.com.br, a Brazilian cellular company.
• North American mannequin generally don’t have nipples. I think. I’ve got no supporting evidence on this point.
• I don’t have the CSI magic that enables you to read a fly’s tattoo with a 20-year-old security camera, but I do have Photoshop. When I tweak some settings on and reverse this photo, I get this decent view of the reflected background. A sign is visible. I can’t be certain, but it appears to read “something e something”. I don’t know a word of Portuguese, but I do know that apparently ‘and’ is spelled ‘e’. Of course, the photographer could be traveling somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, because the letter could also be a ‘y’.

You can also see the photographer and her phone. Can anybody identify which phone that is?

Any other conclusions we can draw? Don’t worry, I’m not going to start stalking some poor Brazilian woman–I just dig the mystery.