[OSM-talk] Why am I getting spam via OSM website messages?

[Tom Hughes]

On 31/07/14 12:20, Dave F. wrote:

> This arrived a minute ago from user SDuser92130:
>
> Dear OSM contributor,
>
> If you are at least 18 years of age and you speak English, you are
> invited to take part in a brief research study pursued by faculty at a
> major university in the U.S. This will involve an audio interview over
> Skype that will address the OpenStreetMap community and your related
> perceptions. It should take about 20 minutes. At the end of the
> interview, you will be sent an electronic gift card for [the equivalent
> of] €50 (fifty euros). If interested, please reply by August 4, 2014 at
> 11:59pm GMT to arrange the interview details (the interview must take
> place by August 7 and, as the number of available interview spots is
> limited, you should reply at your earliest convenience).
>
> Thank you in advance for your potential participation.

I am aware of these messages - there aren't a huge number (about 150 or 
so over 10 days) and as far as I know they are genuine attempts by an 
academic to conduct some sort of research.

They could probably be better written sure, but it's not clear to me 
that they are "spam" as such, although the definition of that is always 
somewhat subjective and personal.

To date they haven't seemed clearly abusive, which is why I haven't 
taken any action against them.

> Did they obtain the email database or are the messages being sent out
> one at a time to individual users?

No of course they didn't obtain any emails, as should be obvious from 
the fact that the message arrived via the OSM messaging system!

My suspicion would be that they are sending them to people in particular 
areas and/or who are frequent editors. They show some signs of being 
tailored to the user's home location for example.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/