Is it ethical or legal for companies to scrape GitHub stars for spam purposes?

Posted by elbrian on Friday July 16, 2021 @07:25AM
from the self-post dept.

Just got an email from [email protected] with some spam and he mentioned that he got my information from the stargazers list of the Gatsby repo.

Is this something I should bother reporting to GitHub? I will likely never star another repo again because it's been proven to be a good source of spam.

( 2 comments | 3 points | on HN )

Re:Is it ethical or legal for companies to scrape GitHub sta... by verdverm on Friday July 16, 2021 @01:45PM (#27858970)

I have started thousands of repos only a handful have ever reached out directly. I get more spam from people finding my repos and trying to sell me something. So I wouldn't write off stars yet, though given the GitHub timeline "spam" from staring repos...

YMMV

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Is it ethical or legal for companies to scrape GitHub sta... by sarcasmatwork on Friday July 16, 2021 @07:35AM (#27855209)

Have you looked thru the TOS?

https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...

[ Parent | on HN ]