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

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

#121

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

renewiltord wrote: post #25

Lmao I periodically troll my friends by sending them GDPR and CCPA notices. If you did this to my blog, I’d let you take me to small claims or whatever. The probability of you making it all the way to prosecution and the total harm is so low that I’m not going to CCPA or GDPR enforce on my blog. Bite me.

> The probability of you making it all the way to prosecution and the total harm is so low that I’m not going to CCPA or GDPR enforce on my blog.

I hope this line would get included in discovery; I would... actually pay money to watch you explain to a judge that you explicitly decided to ignore the law.

(IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the real defense would be that the law actually doesn't apply to you)

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

#122

Post by Godel_unicode »

walrus01 wrote: post #47
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. yes it will, but a really determined person with an axe to grind will very often make known their intentions well in advance of that. and no, it won't always come by snail mail, DMCA notices and similar with actual legal threats will arrive regularly via SMTP.

This is, of course, not true. Please stop.

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

#123

Post by idiocrat »

If there were a contratial agreement before the start of the study, the participants could have negotiated the monetary re-imbursement for the work done. (including data processing fees and the legal consultation).

By coercing the participants into study the university has in fact waived own negotiation rights. The university should compensate the participants for the actual work done, at the a fair market rate, and reimburse the legal fees.

(I am not a laywer).

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

#124

Post by Sebb767 »

42jd wrote: post #78
42jd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I posted this hoping to raise awareness, but the reaction was not what I expected. In the US even a meritless legal threat will require hiring a lawyer to ensure you are in the clear which requires significant amount of money, in addition to the stress. Researchers should never be putting anyone in that position.

Just going to tag along to my comment above. I can't help but notice the difference in tone of the responses to this article vs. the one yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29599553 ) which I did not see. It seems those who participated in the thread yesterday had a quite different opinion.

I guess it's the wording. "without my consent" is used to imply a strong violation of the personality rights, at least in some circles [0]. It's also pretty much a repeat of yesterdays post. At least to me, this makes the issue feel a bit overblown.

[0] The irony that the whole problem is based on wording that implies a lawsuit is not lost on me.

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

#125

Post by walrus01 »

rectang wrote: post #81
quadrifoliate wrote: post #48

A lot of people mocking the author or others for being scared and worried are basically blaming the victim here, and I would like them to stop. The nature of legal practices in the USA is such that the answers to "Are you totally in the clear legally?" and "Will you lose significant amounts of money proving in random courts that you are in the clear legally?" are often both yes. As a result, any researchers who send…

I think the derision illustrates a low ethical floor in the industry. Intimidating users with legalese is standard business practice, for instance in user agreements. The fearful effect it has on the less knowledgeable, competent, and resourceful among us doesn't even seem to register. It reminds me of abusive sales techniques that victimize seniors, and the salespeople who chortle at the stupidity of those who get t…

Abusive sales techniques aren't just for the elderly, if you've ever seen a car dealer sell a Dodge Charger or similar to a gullible US military E2 at 22% interest on an 84 month term...

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

#126

Post by jahewson »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #8

> My name is Maya Mishina, and I am a resident of Novosibirsk, Russia. If i received such an email, I would mark it as spam and move on with my life. Why did this blogger take it seriously? Does she take other forms of spam so seriously? I do feel for her stress and anxiety, but I also have to question her mental ability to filter noise. Life must be quite stressful for her overall.

But spam exists for a reason - it works! Some percentage of people really do respond to spam emails. It’s not ok to take advantage of those people or dismiss them.

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

#127

Post by walrus01 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #122
walrus01 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail. yes it will, but a really determined person with an axe to grind will very often make known their intentions well in advance of that. and no, it won't always come by snail mail, DMCA notices and similar with actual legal threats will arrive regularly via SMTP.

This is, of course, not true. Please stop.

My job involves DMCA pass through compliance and I have several hundred of such threats from a myriad of sources sitting in an inbox right now which say otherwise.

Perhaps you've never had thousands of people torrenting movies using you as a service provider before.

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

#128

Post by Sebb767 »

etataetaet wrote: post #117
Sebb767 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This week only I've been threatened to have videos taken from my webcam released - unless I pay a ransom - and I was asked to pay due bills in the attached zip file twice. And that's only what my spam filter did not catch. Given that they were targeted here, this person has a public mail address, so it's very likely they receive similar spam. Given that and the observation that they seem to be stressed by spam, this…

Its just too small of a sample size to make any real judgments. One short article isn't enough information to make any meaningful comments her stress levels.

Of course. But I think this was less of a judgement and more of a sympathizing comment [0], which doesn't really require that much hard evidence.

[0] At least when we assume good faith.

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

#129

Post by [deleted] »

renewiltord wrote: post #25

Lmao I periodically troll my friends by sending them GDPR and CCPA notices. If you did this to my blog, I’d let you take me to small claims or whatever. The probability of you making it all the way to prosecution and the total harm is so low that I’m not going to CCPA or GDPR enforce on my blog. Bite me.

[deleted]

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

#130

Post by pkrotich »

PeterisP wrote: post #108
pkrotich wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See “Note from Jonathan Mayer” section - he apologized and took responsibility on the first paragraph.
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