YC Companies Scrape GitHub Activity Data and Send Spam Emails to Users
By
miki123211
The bagel they save for the regulars. Don't skim, savour.
Summary
The article discusses how Y Combinator companies are scraping GitHub activity data and using it to send spam emails to users. It explains the technical challenge of removing or changing email addresses from Git commits due to the cryptographic hash-based nature of Git version control. Changing any part of a commit (including email addresses) alters its hash, which cascades through all subsequent commits, making repositories incompatible with the original versions. The article highlights privacy concerns about companies mining public GitHub data for marketing purposes.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledGit commits are identified by a hash of their entire contents
If the email address in even one commit is changed or removed, that changes its hash, which in turn requires you to update its children, changing their hashes etc.
By default, git will refuse to pull from such an updated repository, as commits are considered immutable once pushed.
YC companies scrape GitHub activity, send spam emails to users
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