FindGitHubEmail

Security and privacy

email address lookup

SHOW HN2013

64points
37comments
#400of 1,739 in 2013
Top 24%of 2013 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

3 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 4 critical, out of 12 comments about the project. Thread score 0.00.

Idea: 2 for, 2 againstExecution: 1 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful tool, and email addresses are not secrets

    From 1 comment
    • Thanks for the useful tool! Email addresses are not secrets, and I can't count the hours I've wasted trying to email some developer who thinks that by keeping his email address…
      NelsonMinar on HN
  • Clever short bash script

    From 1 comment
    • I'm always fascinated when something like this appears on HN and it turns out to be a dozen lines of bash. I could easily imagine writing a hundred lines of a "better" language…
      tsm on HN

Objections

  • Emails are already public on GitHub profiles, so it adds little

    From 2 comments
    • This feels like nothing more than linkbait with no value-add. Emails are public on Github anyways, so simply browsing to github.com/<username> will show the users registered…
      hoop on HN
    • Pretty obvious to those of us who use GitHub. Commit to a public repo under your email and people can see it? Not news.
      twistedpair on HN
  • Only finds users with public activity; misses private-org users

    From 1 comment
    • Title should be corrected, as it doesn't get the email address of all users, only those with public activity. A team member on a private org repo I'm a part of has no public…
      bdcravens on HN
  • Returns emails of other contributors rather than the user

    From 1 comment
    • Running it against my username, the first email address it pulls is the email of someone who contributed to one of my projects, not mine. (using -a does also include my address)
      bdcravens on HN
  • Harvested emails fuel recruiter spam

    From 2 comments
    • You can get any email for a developer from their commits in the json api...companies like Entelo & TalentBin have discovered this a long time ago and appear to be reselling them…
      bitsweet on HN
    • > If you have seen an uptick in recruiter spam lately, now you know why. Thank you, I was wondering how so many managed to find my e-mail.
      ceejayoz on HN

Requests

  • Use a better bash approach or other language

    From 2 comments
    • It could be better bash, e.g. using [[ instead of [. Also, ``` curl -s https://api.github.com/users/$2/events/public | grep "\"gravatar_id\":" | sed -e's/[,|"]//g' | head -n 1 |…
      ralph on HN
    • Ruby uses `` to execute installed programs, which is the best part of bash. I'd say Ruby rivals bash in this sense.
      nsmartt on HN
  • Use MD5 matching against gravatar hash

    From 2 comments
    • I thought this was going to be a reverse-MD5 on their gravatar url. Interesting to know this is there, too! (As a possible improvement you could also take all possible matches…
      adamsmith on HN
    • https://github.com/hodgesmr/FindGitHubEmail/pull/5 I'm not really that familiar with bash scripting so this might be a mess.
      bcuccioli on HN

Questions

  • Why is this news on Hacker News?

    From 1 comment
    • Honest question - why is this news? (And why was it also news yesterday?)
      scoot on HN
  • Is it legal to email harvested addresses under CAN-SPAM?

    From 3 comments
    • You can get any email for a developer from their commits in the json api...companies like Entelo & TalentBin have discovered this a long time ago and appear to be reselling them…
      bitsweet on HN
    • > I believe its illegal (can-spam) to email someone if you harvested their email programmatically Nope. You can email pretty much anyone in America, regardless of how you…
      eli on HN
    • The CAN-SPAM Act has specific prohibitions (and extra harsh sentencing guidelines) for spamming harvested (or "dictionary attack") e-mails. Even if you meet all the other…
      dangrossman on HN

Alternatives named

  • Entelo and TalentBin harvest developer emails from commits

    From 1 comment
    • You can get any email for a developer from their commits in the json api...companies like Entelo & TalentBin have discovered this a long time ago and appear to be reselling them…
      bitsweet on HN
  • Hacktalent sells developer emails

    From 1 comment

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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