Reconnaissance: Finding necessary info during a pentest

I had a healthy debate with Mr. Boettcher this week about the merits of doing recon for a pentest. Mr. Boettcher is a heavy duty proponent of it, and I see it as a necessary evil, but not one that I consider important.  We hash it out, and find some common ground this week. People search links: Spokeo - http://www.spokeo.com/ Pipl - https://pipl.com/   Sec Filings site: http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm   Intro "Private Eye", transition "Mining by Moonlight", and Outro "Honeybee" created by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/