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

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81–90 of 278 posts

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

#81
post #25

This sounded familiar, so I checked my inbox and I did indeed receive a similar email from sanchitmonga@runanywheresdk.com earlier this month: > I came across your GitHub profile and thought you might be interested in what my team and I are building. We're developing an open source SDK that runs LLMs directly on-device. What's even more interesting is that both buildrunanywhere.org and runanywheresdk.com show a stock…

[deleted]

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

#82

Maybe a dumb question, but isn't this trivially solved with this .gitconfig? [user] name = lordgrenville email = +lordgrenville@users.noreply.github.com

Not all projects are hosted at github. You also might want to receve relevant mail from fellow developers.

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

#85
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that even be legal? (Although I can't find such a startup with any kind of search engine)

Why would it be illegal?

i am not sure of anywhere it is illegal.

but areas i am familiar with can consider a negative reference to be defamation, thus anyone providing a negative reference should only do so if they are able to defend it (i.e. prove their statement is substantially true, or prove that the statement was honestly believed to be true and published with no malice or reckless disregard).

seems risky, at least, to build a whole business around negative references that could potentially cross the line into defamation. but that type of thinking is probably why i am not rich.

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

#86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be illegal?

i am not sure of anywhere it is illegal . but areas i am familiar with can consider a negative reference to be defamation, thus anyone providing a negative reference should only do so if they are able to defend it (i.e. prove their statement is substantially true, or prove that the statement was honestly believed to be true and published with no malice or reckless disregard). seems risky, at least, to build a whole b…

It's definitely illegal in the UK.

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

#87
post #76

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…

Nice, thank you Martin. How do you punish the fraudsters? Do you send them to prison over CFAA violation terms of service?

Will send a strong email: Don’t do bad things.

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

#88
Got this spam today on my GitHub address, YC affiliated:

From: henry@joincactuscompute.com

Hey,

I hope all is well with you, just reaching out as you seem to be interested in on-device speech models.

Cactus is a low-latency AI engine for consumer devices like phones, Macs, wearables, Raspberry Pis, etc.

We support transcription models like Whisper & Parakeet, benchmarks available in the attached GitHub repo.

GitHub: https://github.com/cactus-compute/cactus

We are keen to get your feedback, and star if feeling generous.

Thanks a million

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

#89

I usually check the "Received" header and report to the email service provider. Once in a while I receive a response saying the case is properly handled. These providers are the only ones that care about their reputation and thus may take some action. Investors? Nope.

the problem is that the emails arent typically sent from the main domain.

in this example, the email came from buildrunanywhere.org, which is just a parked domain. the real domain is runanywhere.ai, which they arent using for spam.

so, once buildrunanywhere.org has their reputation burned from reports, they will simply register buildrunanywheres.org and start spamming again.

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

#90
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be illegal?

i am not sure of anywhere it is illegal . but areas i am familiar with can consider a negative reference to be defamation, thus anyone providing a negative reference should only do so if they are able to defend it (i.e. prove their statement is substantially true, or prove that the statement was honestly believed to be true and published with no malice or reckless disregard). seems risky, at least, to build a whole b…

There are many definitions of illegal (criminal, civil, regulatory, the much much looser “license to operate” as used in chemical industry, etc).

A blacklist seems dubious. I’d advise the founders to get counsel on their obligations under the FCRA, which they may be construed to be regulated by.

That said, I believe "Bad News" is an AI hallucination. The most similar company I can find historical news is "Peeple"[0], which was not funded by YC. YCombinator's only known association with a blacklist that I can find was a blacklist of VC's that were accused of harassing female founders[1].

0: https://archive.is/r9UQo

1: https://archive.is/17Ans

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