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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

#141

Post by arcfour »

6thbit wrote: post #124

I wish github could ammend the email of my commits to the private noreply address during push so they _never_ have any other email associated to them. May not be feasible due to the commit changing, confusing local branch and such? They have this other thing where they reject pushes for the 'known' emails you've told them you have, but kinda seems there should be a setting to do that for any email that is not your no…

They literally have a setting to block pushes with any email other than the noreply one, lol.

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

#142

Post by arcfour »

ttoinou wrote: post #132

Couldn’t github replace all public commits author info email by a username@author.github.com email automagically ?

You have to configure your own Git client manually. But you can configure GitHub to block pushes from any email other than the no reply email GH generates for you.

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

#143

Post by trympet »

martinwoodward wrote: post #117
trympet wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I kinda wish I had that much power. There would certainly be less people in the world listening to their phones without headphones.. Usually starts with contacting them over email reminding them of the terms of service and warning them to stop. Then their account might get deactivated and they need to write and promise to not be naughty again. If they ignore that then the account gets removed. There are a bunch of au…

Love the transparency - someone should make you VP of ..uhm dev rel or something! I was being quite hyperbolic in my original comment, however, I _do_ think you are doing the right thing, and you are definitely not the bad guy.

Having said that, there are big corps who have been known to use the CFAA as a way to coerce the long arm of the law upon teenagers and geeks hacking away - not always a great thing either IMO.

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

#145

Post by ryandrake »

AznHisoka wrote: post #38
kristoff_it wrote: post #11

I have received over the years so much spam of this kind by multiple YC-funded companies that I now reflexively send to spam any email that mentions being YC-funded, regardless of how legitimate the email is.

Same here, having YC attached to your name is not the flex you think it is, its even the opposite for me

Their brand has been associated with hacking-around and gaining advantage via rule breaking for a while. Didn't their founder application at one point ask "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?" At this point, I think everyone knows they're signing up for dark patterns and questionable practices when they get involved.

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

#146

Post by stevekemp »

WhatsName wrote: post #29

Doesn't YC have some code of conduct or legal/ethical guidelines? I would assume a legal and compliance department would have some major headache if documented cases of misconduct jeopardize later due diligence. I would not fund or aquire a company on the radar of national regulatory bodies for something as stupid as this.

It's not "spam", it's a "growth hack".

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

#147

Post by b8 »

Boundaries don't exist really in tech and especially with emails. I just filter out spam and block a good bit. People just ignore stuff now a days even people saying hi passing someone in the street (which I stopped doing)? My colleges spam filter catches a lot of them. Your email is presumably already in data dumps.

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

#148

Post by elwebmaster »

Just got a SPAM email from a Github scraper while reading this thread:

From: james@techglobal.website Quick note – your GitHub profile Hi X,

I came across your profile on GitHub. Given you're based in the US, I thought it might be relevant to reach out.

Profile:

I run a technical team (full-stack, cloud, DevOps) that delivers for clients. We're looking to work with an engineer based in the US on client-facing coordination—discovery, requirements, alignment—while we handle delivery. If that might be relevant, I'd be glad to set up a short call.

Regards, James

If I had to guess, "James" is a North Korean looking to scam US clients, based on my experience with shady actors.

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

#149

Post by observationist »

davnn wrote: post #128
observationist wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, Martin - https://github.com/lucidrains Mind fixing lucidrains account? Something happened without notice or recourse. He's one of, if not the most well known open source AI researchers on the planet, with implementations and explanations of papers and ideas that are wonderful. If you could bring some sanity to that situation and take it out of whatever kafkaesque account purgatory it fell into, you'd be doing th…

What was happening with this account? I was often seeing popular but empty (only title of the paper and maybe a short readme) repositories that were created directly after a paper was published?

Just part of the process - he'd queue up the projects as interesting things came in, then plow through. Usually he'd have a rough framework within a day or two, and then a working proof of concept within a week, and then return to the most promising, useful, or interesting projects.

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

#150

Post by Goronmon »

ryandrake wrote: post #145
AznHisoka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, having YC attached to your name is not the flex you think it is, its even the opposite for me

Their brand has been associated with hacking-around and gaining advantage via rule breaking for a while. Didn't their founder application at one point ask "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?" At this point, I think everyone knows they're signing up for dark patterns and questionable practices when they get involved.

Their brand has been associated with hacking-around and gaining advantage via rule breaking for a while.

Yup, this type of behavior is pretty much as I would expect and it's something I've seen since I first started posting here.

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