Comment by lidHanteyk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lidHanteyk | Hacker News Reader

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This is a big deal because the recruiter is in clear violation of the GitHub ToS[0]. Quoting from section H: "You may not use the API to download data or Content from GitHub for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of selling GitHub users' personal information, such as to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards."

Of course recruiters are incapable of sound ethical judgement. Part of living with people who have poor ethics is enacting rules which force them to conform or be excluded.

If your ability to care about rules is this low, then you're going to spend all of your life in a state of imminent lawlessness.

Your typos are honestly more interesting than anything else; your message isn't important, just wrong and at the top of the page.

I hope that you are ready to explain CCPA to your boss. I won't accuse you of doing a bad job, though.

The recruiter in question, like all recruiters, is to be avoided when possible. Avoid rent-seeking and grifting.

[0] https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-terms-of-service#...

It's not obvious to me why the recruiter in question is in violation of this rule. The rules bans someone from extracting information with GitHub API and selling such information to recruiters. It does not seem to ban recruiters from acquiring this information themselves.

It’s not spam for a recruiter to send an email to a developer.

Spam is defined as “unsolicited bulk email”.

Https://spamhaus.org/consumer/definition

It’s a one off, not hulk, so recruiters emailing developer emails found on GitHub isn’t spamming.

Nor is the email address being sold in this case so that aspect of GitHub terms is not being violated.

So in fact you’re wrong and it’s perfectly legitimate for recruiters to use email addresses from GitHub and email them asking about jobs.

> Spam is defined as “unsolicited bulk email”.

More commonly, unsolicited/unwanted commercial email, see, e.g.:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam

The commercial aspect is a red-herring, because B2B where there's an existing business relationship are normally excluded from spam laws.

The UBE (unsolicited, bulk, email) definition is the one used by most blocklists and filters and ISP AUPs.

> The commercial aspect is a red-herring

No, it's not

> because B2B where there's an existing business relationship are normally excluded from spam laws.

That's not just B2B, but that's part of the definition of “unsolicited”, it doesn't make the commercial part is a red-herring, either in general or in the context of this thread, which did not involve either a pre-existing business relationship or, since you unnecessarily called it out as relevant, a B2B interaction.

> The UBE (unsolicited, bulk, email) definition is the one used by most blocklists and filters

That's because “bulk”, unlike “commercial”, is easily detectable. (And also because because bulk has the most impact, because, bulk.)

> and ISP AUPs.

Virtually all ISP AUPs include prohibition on unlawful use which includes violations of laws concerning unsolicited commercial email.

The "bulk" definition is more widespread and is the definition that's enforced more often. So, mentioning "commercial" is weird because most service providers don't care whether it's commercial or not, they care whether it's bulk or not.

You could take the API info you're looking for and then cross reference it with a simple GitHub user search, filtering for users that have "available for hire" selected in their profile.

I used this method years ago, albeit manually. I didn't have much luck though as it's akin to cold calling.

I found it much easier to pay a job and let the interested candidates come to you.

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