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Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

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Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#41

Post by BitsAndObjects »

AznHisoka wrote: post #37
martinwoodward wrote: post #31

Martin from GitHub here. This type of behaviour is explicitly against the GitHub terms of service, when we catch the accounts doing this we can (and do) take action against those accounts including banning the accounts. It's a game of whack-a-mole for sure, and it's not just start-ups that take part in this sketchy behaviour to be honest. I've been plenty of examples in my time across the board. The fundamental natur…

Maybe I am missing something, but can’t you simply not show the email address in a git commit? (Sincere question, not saying this is trivial. i am dumb and like to ask dumb questions even if might be embarassing) If someone wants to message someone, it goes through github notifications or github emails them Also banning an account doesnt seem like a heavy punishment, given they can simply move to gitlab, bitbucket et…

That would be a fundamental change to how Git works, not just GitHub. Even if the web UI didn't show it, a simple `git log` would reveal it.

You can mask your email address in git commits but a lot of open source projects won't accept that. And some pseudo-open-source ones insist on sending you an email to authenticate before they'll give you access to the GitHub repo (looking at you Unreal Engine!)

So, no, I don't think they could simply "not show the email address".

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#43

Post by easton »

AznHisoka wrote: post #37
martinwoodward wrote: post #31

Martin from GitHub here. This type of behaviour is explicitly against the GitHub terms of service, when we catch the accounts doing this we can (and do) take action against those accounts including banning the accounts. It's a game of whack-a-mole for sure, and it's not just start-ups that take part in this sketchy behaviour to be honest. I've been plenty of examples in my time across the board. The fundamental natur…

Maybe I am missing something, but can’t you simply not show the email address in a git commit? (Sincere question, not saying this is trivial. i am dumb and like to ask dumb questions even if might be embarassing) If someone wants to message someone, it goes through github notifications or github emails them Also banning an account doesnt seem like a heavy punishment, given they can simply move to gitlab, bitbucket et…

Git commits have a email address as a required field[0], although some people put something bogus in there. And then it's in the data provided when you clone the repo onto your machine even if you aren't using the GitHub APIs.

To his point, you can set that to the no-reply email address GitHub gives you if you don't want mail but do want the commit to be linked to your GitHub account.

[0]: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#_commit_information

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#45

Post by keiferski »

I've spent a lot of my career marketing to developers, and spamming their GitHub account might be top 1 or 2 worst marketing tactics you can use.

Cold emailing rarely works by itself. Cold emailing developers via emails you pulled from their GitHub accounts? At that point, you're actively harming your brand, and may as well just send them spam diet pill ads.

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#46

Post by BitsAndObjects »

My solution to this is to use a Github-specific email address. All emails sent to that address which do not originate from GitHub are immediately reported as spam, marked read and deleted.

I sometimes use different git/GitHub addresses depending on who I'm working for or specific projects so I can more accurately detect where data is being scraped from.

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#47

Post by BitsAndObjects »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #46

My solution to this is to use a Github-specific email address. All emails sent to that address which do not originate from GitHub are immediately reported as spam, marked read and deleted. I sometimes use different git/GitHub addresses depending on who I'm working for or specific projects so I can more accurately detect where data is being scraped from.

N.B. Using service-specific emails is trivial - you don't need separate email accounts. Just use email aliases, e.g. "john.smith+github@gmail.com" -- which is an alias called "github" for "john.smith@gmail.com"

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#48

Post by AznHisoka »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #41
AznHisoka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am missing something, but can’t you simply not show the email address in a git commit? (Sincere question, not saying this is trivial. i am dumb and like to ask dumb questions even if might be embarassing) If someone wants to message someone, it goes through github notifications or github emails them Also banning an account doesnt seem like a heavy punishment, given they can simply move to gitlab, bitbucket et…

That would be a fundamental change to how Git works, not just GitHub. Even if the web UI didn't show it, a simple `git log` would reveal it. You can mask your email address in git commits but a lot of open source projects won't accept that. And some pseudo-open-source ones insist on sending you an email to authenticate before they'll give you access to the GitHub repo (looking at you Unreal Engine!) So, no, I don't t…

Makes sens! Appreciate the explanation!

Re: Tell HN: YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users

#50

Post by rodrigodlu »

I did receive these kinds of emails as well.

And I use a different email fromy priority email for GitHub commits since 4 years ago.

So just stop with marketing slop please.

Yes, I work with AI, and I'm becoming pretty good at it.

But this doesn't mean I'm comfortable pushing AI slop into potential users and customers.

I (and they) want to use AI to facilitate their processes, not to ingest slop content.

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