By the way, I also received a belated reply from Doug Fuller, formally rejecting my offer to purchase a defaulted loan (See MNH #4 -- Trav's Do-It-Yourself Secondary Markey & Panaderia).
Did it actually come from his email account?
It appears that it did. I haven't checked the headers (it's not as if I'd know what I was looking for), and he didn't attach a picture of his hand on the keyboard, so I can't be positive that he actually wrote it.
The only trustworthy header is one added by the server that receives your incoming email. If you're not familiar with what that server adds, you can't be sure, but basically look for a Return-Path header. If there isn't one of those, look for a Sender header.
In the only personal email I've ever received from Prosper, there was this header:
Return-Path: <*********@prosper.com>where ********** was that person's name.
I know that that header was placed there by my mail server, so I know that it's trustworthy information of what is called the envelope sender. If someone else sent an email with Doug's email address in the From header, the envelope sender would still
probably be the actual sender, but that's not guaranteed. I could send easily send an email with an envelope sender of <president@whitehouse.gov> if I wanted to.
