I was part of a human subject research study without my consent • Hacker News Board

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#101

Post by otterley » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #42

walrus01 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see emails from cranks all the time and similarly have a do-not-respond policy to any of them, but at the same time, something like this is very slightly worrisome because it seems to be presenting the non-zero chance that some random person will sue you in your local court system. Which even if it is completely nonsensical and has no basis in law, could cost thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a respons…

> very slightly worrisome Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome. Again, I think you, too, are being suckered into spam. Plenty of people fall for spam scams. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Think of all the people who fall for the fake IRS phone calls. But learn from it: keep your guard up when you get emails, phone ca…

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

That statement is false. Please don’t provide incorrect legal information in this forum.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#102

Post by Jiro » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

pkrotich wrote: post #51

dcow wrote: post #17

Can someone help me understand the ethical problem here? If I as an ordinary citizen contacted the webmaster with a similar worded email, the result would have been the same. The fact is that this “experiment” did not create any more or additional stress than is created for normal citizens/businesses simply engaging in normal legal activities. If submitting such a request has the potential to cause such undue stress,…

It absolutely looked like a legal treat of some sort. The study is now suspended and the investigator is even admitting they errored [0]. [0] https://privacystudy.cs.princeton.edu

I noticed the "FAQ" doesn't include the question "will you be paying out money to people who read your email and spent money on a lawyer checking it out?"

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#103

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #95

> This scared the shit out of me This is satire, yes? Come on.

Think how he must react to those “you owe the IRS $20,000 in gift card” emails or “we have your personal email archives and will post them for all to see unless you send 2 bitcoins by Friday 8:00 UTC”

Some people need to look at what insults them and maybe reflect on why such things are insulting, or what it even means to be insulted in the first place.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#104

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #22

Aerroon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these privacy laws do require a response when you collect data, no?

Not until you're collecting data at the scale where you'd have a legal@yourdomain team to forward anything that vaguely smells like a legal inquiry. Which is why my tip applied for "non-business" cases.

Is it reasonable to expect people to know that? If I'm below that level, what are the odds of me knowing the law well enough to know that it doesn't apply to me?

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#105

Post by dqv » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #13

dannyobrien wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was contacted by my system administrator about this email, even though we chat roughly once a year; we get a lot of spam too but a legal threat is something you need to keep an eye on.

> legal threat is something you need to keep an eye on. Yes but you still need to be judicious and critical.

The things I would look for in an illegitimate email are not there. Where are the typos? The poor use of language? It is a very well-crafted email. The address is maybe a little off, but tons of my legitimate clients have weird emails like this.

It would have gotten my response... probably an hour of my time explaining how our policies work and how, yes, we would comply with their request even if the laws don't technically protect them. There isn't really a prefilled template you can respond to questions like this (if you actually care about responding inquiries like this) so I would have genuinely spent time thinking about the questions and giving them more than a yes and no.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#106

Post by etataetaet » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:48 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #31

etataetaet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but how can you make the assumption that "life must be quite stressful for her overall."? We know almost nothing about her life or what kind of situation she is in... It seems a little weird to make such large assumptions about anyone who you don't personally know!

Quoted post unavailable.

Key word is "probably"! We just don't have enough information to make any judgments about her. For example from your two comments I could say you are a judgmental individual. However, I think that would be both rude and inaccurate! One article or two comments is just too small of a sample size to get any meaningful insight on someones character!

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#107

Post by phendrenad2 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:48 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #17

Can someone help me understand the ethical problem here? If I as an ordinary citizen contacted the webmaster with a similar worded email, the result would have been the same. The fact is that this “experiment” did not create any more or additional stress than is created for normal citizens/businesses simply engaging in normal legal activities. If submitting such a request has the potential to cause such undue stress,…

No you're absolutely right. The CCPA is onerous and should be repealed.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#108

Post by PeterisP » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

pkrotich wrote: post #51

dcow wrote: post #17

Can someone help me understand the ethical problem here? If I as an ordinary citizen contacted the webmaster with a similar worded email, the result would have been the same. The fact is that this “experiment” did not create any more or additional stress than is created for normal citizens/businesses simply engaging in normal legal activities. If submitting such a request has the potential to cause such undue stress,…

It absolutely looked like a legal treat of some sort. The study is now suspended and the investigator is even admitting they errored [0]. [0] https://privacystudy.cs.princeton.edu

Are you reading some other comment than what you linked? I'm not seeing any admission of error in this FAQ.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#109

Post by iudqnolq » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #42

walrus01 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see emails from cranks all the time and similarly have a do-not-respond policy to any of them, but at the same time, something like this is very slightly worrisome because it seems to be presenting the non-zero chance that some random person will sue you in your local court system. Which even if it is completely nonsensical and has no basis in law, could cost thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a respons…

> very slightly worrisome Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome. Again, I think you, too, are being suckered into spam. Plenty of people fall for spam scams. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Think of all the people who fall for the fake IRS phone calls. But learn from it: keep your guard up when you get emails, phone ca…

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

It doesn't need to be legally binding to be worrisome. Imagine I told you "I'm going to sue you. You don't need to do anything until you get the formal notice" and you found the statement credible. Would you go on with your life as normal, or would you be stressed and hire counsel if affordable?

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#110

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #7

darkwizard42 wrote: post #3

The Institutional Review Board doesn't seem to be much of an "ethical board" given they don't consider the stress this causes the human side of the website operators. How did they conclude this doesn't count as "human subjects research" given the expectation is to measure a human response to an email (framed as from a person)?

In particular, to an email which: 1. does not disclose that this is a research survey; 2. does not inform the recipient that they can decline to participate without any adverse consequence (as they state in their study FAQ), instead doing entirely the opposite - ending the mail with an assertion (untrue for most recipients) that they have a legal duty to respond; 3. lies about the origin of the email, inventing a fak…

and,

5. which caused people harm, in the form of time, stress, and in apparently a fair number of cases, money spent consulting a lawyer in the belief that they were about to be sued.