CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University • Hacker News Board

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#351

Post by ehasbrouck » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

I got one of the "Tom Harris" messages, sent to an e-mail address scraped from the Web site of a small California-based nonprofit organization.

I've gotten no response to my e-mail messages sent to the 3 researchers who have identified themselves, or the Princeton IRB. But I was able to find phone numbers for all 3 of the researchers in their c.v.'s posted online. The Principal Investigator has yet to return my calls, but the grad student took my call. He referred most of my questions to the principal investigator, but he did tell me that they sent e-mail to between 200K and 300K addresses scraped form a list of the "top" 1M Web sites.

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#352

Post by hallarempt » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

I invoiced them for the time they made me waste...

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#353

Post by hallarempt » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #308

webmaven wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can accept that some people don't see the information requested as being "about whom" and therefore is not human subjects research. But the fact that people who have received this email have panicked indicates that the recipients, at least, felt that the questions were more than merely recording impersonal data about their websites. I guess the distinction is whether you see a website as an organization, even whe…

But at the end of the day a "website" -- whether it's a large organization, a small business or a sole proprietor-- is still maintained by people. There might be a process in place if it's a large enough company, it might even get directly sent to the lawyers to deal with. But at the end of the day someone has to look at the email and respond, and in many cases that can cost money. To wave off the whole thing as "we'…

Of course it costs money! Even my own "huh, this is weird, anyway, we don't collect any data, so let's tell them to eff off" cost me time, and therefore money, so, invoice time it is.