GitHub Email Thief | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Email Thief

maxmautner.com

9 pointsfinnn5 comments

This is just FUD clickbait[1]. Of course your email is visible in git commits; you don't have to mess around with metadata APIs to get it!

This tiny article is literally an advertisement: "For those curious about <buzzwords/FUD keywords>, get in touch with me at <email>, <feel-good blurb>."

[1] "you will torch your ability to send any emails w/o them going to the spam folder." WTF? This is neither explained nor justified, and is simply false. In fact, although I'm not a big fan of github-recruiting, I would think for a developer publishing your email in your commits is a good way to get more recruiting email!

What I think he's trying to say is that spammers will use your email address as a falsified "from" field because github is a treasure-trove of real looking emails.

That doesn't impact you at all if your email's domain happens to be one that does SPF correctly (which every major provider does do) you should be fine because those false emails will be bounced prior to them being able to impact spam score.

If you have a really poorly configured email server, it's very possible someone could make you have a terrible time with spam filters by sending spam from "you". Of course, this can happen just as easily with or without Github in the picture typically.

If any recruiter would put in the effort to check my Github, identify relevant positions to repos listed, manually scrape the Github API to find my email address (not listed on my GH profile), well, then that is a magnitude better than sending me a generic message on LinkedIn for a job I am not even qualified for.

But then again, with the author supplying such a tool with the potential of harvesting email addresses en masse, recruiters might as well not put in the effort (language:X, stars:>50) and have better reach at the same time.

I don't understand why there's a need to use the word "theft". It's just visualizing public information in a more readable way.

You think we don't know our git commit emails are public? Heck, my email is right there on my github profile.

Can you really 'steal' public information?

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