Tell HN: Flo Hiring scraping GitHub emails for recruiting spam

4 points by richbell ↗ HN
This morning I received the following email:

> From: <Chris@flohiring.com>

> Date: <date>

> Subject: Your skills are in high demand

> To: <my@email.com>

> Hello,

> My name is Chris and I work with flohiring.com, a machine learning company that specializes in understanding code.

> Recently Scroller launched a job post for a front-end developer. Our ML systems spotted your GitHub account and recognized you as having skills in Javascript. (If you think our ML system was wrong, we would love your feedback to improve it).

> Please find below some of the details that the company has quoted:

> Tech Stack required - Python, Flask

> Type of work - Full Time

> Salary - $60K - $70K

> Location – United States

> If you want to apply for this position, click this link and apply for the position.

> If you are annoyed that you got this email from us, click here to enter our do not > disturb list. Sorry for the inconvenience .

> Rest of the job details are on the link above but feel free to reply to this email to get any more information.

> Best, Crhis

Ignoring the fact that they're apparently contacting me for a Python job because I have skills in JavaScript, this is obviously unsolicited spam and is explicitly against GitHub's ToS:

> You may not use information from the Service (whether scraped, collected through our API, or obtained otherwise) for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails to users or selling personal information, such as to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/acceptable-use-policies/github-acceptable-use-policies#7-information-usage-restrictions

Despite this, every once in a while someone has the brilliant idea of scraping GitHub profiles for emails (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30900237). They probably think "this is so easy! why hasn't anyone thought of this before?"

0 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 13.1 ms ] thread

No comments yet.