Either this UT person has mentioned you to the consultant as a reference, or (s)he has not mentioned you. In the first case, the consultant would (should) have mentioned that in the email. Moreover, the UT person would (should) have asked you in advance to be a reference. This case is unlikely, so let's go to the alternative case.

The consultant is investigating without consent. What I'd do: I'd ask this consultant to give more private details like name of firm, address and phone number. Also I'd ask whether or not the UT member is aware of the investigation. Depending on the reply, I'd probably also contact the UT member, either to ask whether (s)he agrees or disagrees. Any details you give away as a reference should have been agreed upon by the 'colleague'.

If some firm asked you your opinion about me and you'd give it (either negative or positive), without my approval or request for being a reference, I'd have bad feelings about it. Sure, I can't stop you or anyone else to give an opinion, but esp. towards human resources personnel we should be cautious to only give details if the person gave admission or requested it.


>At this point, here's what I'll provide:
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>The email claimed to be from an independent Consultant in Vancouver. He claimed to be checking out the UT for a certain developer (a UT member) that he was asked to get into a project he had going. He asked me my opinions on the UT member...he went so far as to express what he perceived as a potentially "non-positive" trait of the UT member, and essentially asked if I felt the same way about the UT member.
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>He also went on to ask if I'd ever worked with the UT member on a project, and if I knew the member personally.
>
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>I received this email last week....at the time, I couldn't tell for sure if it was a legitimate email or a "scam"....but in the interest of giving any kind of response, I answered the specific questions on whether I'd ever worked with the person and whether I knew the member personally (gave either yes/no answers). But that was it.
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>In the last few days, I grew more suspicious, especially since I couldn't find the person as a UT member. The specific statements he made in the email suggests that he probably had read more than a few posts. In additon, the person never replied back to me, even when I sent subsequent messages asking for more information from the person.
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>So at this point, while I'm still hopeful that this is somehow legit, my doubts have increased. (I'm not worried about my first reply, as I gave two factual yes/no replies that no one could possibly dispute). But I'm increasingly suspicious that someone was either playing a joke, or actually seeing what I would say. Another forum member sent me a link to another site that contained a reference to the same base email name, with enough specifics that I wondered whether we had possibly "found our man"....but again, I can't say for certain.