mail from Max

Stream: general

[Malvin Gattinger]

It sems Kili Technology is sending out similar emails just now, to email accounts they collected here on zulip. :sigh:

[Kim Morrison]

There's been some correspondence, and Kili has apologised and said this was a mistake... I hope there won't be more.

[Daniel Vitek]

It seems that going to Settings > Personal settings > Account & privacy and changing "Who can access your email address" to something more reasonable like "Admins and moderators" fixes this for future harvesting.

Is there any reason why the default setting for "Who can access your email address" seems to be "Admins, moderators, members, and guests"? (Maybe I have this wrong.) This seems pretty privacy-unfriendly.

[Bryan Gin-ge Chen]

The default setting is currently "Admins and moderators" (I don't know when it was changed to that).

[Daniel Vitek]

OK, thanks for clarifying! Guess I did have it wrong.

[Shreyas Srinivas]

I got one of these emails from someone named “Maxime Michel” from Kili

[Johan Commelin]

Me too. Pretty annoying.

[Chris Birkbeck]

Same

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Sent today, 19:46 UTC+1, from maxime at kili too. Also scraped from Zulip as far as I can see, since I only ever wrote 1 message here, back in 2022.

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

@Kim Morrison this abuse is obviously still continuing

[Yury G. Kudryashov]

My copy has a date Tue, 18 Feb 2025 03:45:44 -0800.

[Chris Birkbeck]

My email said " I found you through recommendation of our current contributors. (Lean 4 and formal math communities" but maybe that's made up or stretching the truth

[Ian Banks]

Mine said that too, and I have never posted in Zulip before nor communicated with anyone in the Lean community in any form with this account. The message arrived at 7PM GMT, the day after Kim said (above) that Kili had apologised and said it was a mistake.

Kili Technology appears to be based in France, so would be subject to the GDPR.

[Jack McKoen]

The Kili email also appears to contain a tracking link! Not cool :(

[Johan Commelin]

That is bad!

[Johan Commelin]

The apology Kim was talking about was posted a while ago, over here: #general > Contact spam @ 💬

[Johan Commelin]

@Eli Kogan-Wang @Ian Banks @Jack McKoen @Shreyas Srinivas we'll be following up on this. Because this is clearly unacceptable.

[Bulhwi Cha]

Someone told me that they also received the message even though they didn't have a Lean Zulip chat account. They created it 4 years ago.

[Niels Voss]

I got one of these emails as well. I have separate emails for my GitHub and Zulip accounts, and the email was sent to the email I use for GitHub. It's possible that the emails are based off of who starred lean4 related repos or has committed to projects tagged with Lean

[Johan Commelin]

That's a good point. Although there are also recent examples where people received the email on an address that they only use for zulip.

[MaxK]

Hi everyone,
Apologies for this—it's a leftover from something I sent in December. There was already a thread on this, and I’m sorry for the duplication. It seems some messages weren’t received at the time, but I’m no longer using them, of course. I’ll check why they’re being delivered now.
Again, sorry, it is my mistake !
link to previous thread - #general > Contact spam @ 💬

[Ian Banks]

I'm finding that a little difficult to believe, because the text of the e-mail I received yesterday is substantially edited from the December e-mail (the one I can see pasted in the previous thread):

image.png

[Ian Banks]

@MaxK To save some digging, are you able to provide contact details for the person that handles GDPR issues at Kili Technology?

[MaxK]

Yes it is indeed, because I used a tool that samples from several email draft, kind of A/B testing objective.
I can however answer your questions on GDPR and propose a definitive solution to this error of mine (I am handling those questions in general).

[Ian Banks]

You're Kili's GDPR Data Protection Officer?

[MaxK]

No, I am the deputy, but I'll share the information with her

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Yeah. Who approved processing my personal data without my consent?

https://support.yet-another-mail-merge.com/hc/en-us/articles/212103069-What-is-spam-How-is-your-email-marked-as-spam

image.png

Processing my personal data without consent to annoy me is illegal and called spamming. The tool you're using makes that very clear.

[Ian Banks]

(...and a deputy GDPR Data Protection Officer should know that, even without a tool giving a warning)

[Henrik Böving]

Eli Kogan-Wang said:

Yeah. Who approved processing my personal data without my consent?

https://support.yet-another-mail-merge.com/hc/en-us/articles/212103069-What-is-spam-How-is-your-email-marked-as-spam

image.png

Processing my personal data without consent to annoy me is illegal and called spamming. The tool you're using makes that very clear.

Warning: IANAL but I had to listen to one explaining the GDPR to me for an entire semester a few years ago:

There is a mechanism in GDPR called "legitimate interest" that can allow processing without explicit consent (note that this legitimate interest must have been established after an internal process in the company that is working with your data and cannot be assumed as given) in certain cases. If my memory from my lecture about legitimate interest serves me right is is possible to establish legitimate interest within the framework of GDPR for the purposes of direct advertisement, in particular also when the data used for this is made public. I'm not saying that this is what happened here or that I'm fine with this behavior, but just because you didn't consent does not mean there is a GDPR violation.

[MaxK]

I am super sorry that this has been taken wrongly, as I said it is a relic of a december exploration I did. The idea is really not to sell anything but to invite the community to contribute to a interesting os project. I thought the interest in lean 4 was shared and working on its futur would have interested the community. As I said in december I am not gathering for new contacts anymore (I don't have any scrapper working or things like that), it is just that most of the people I have contacted have been interested and are discussing with me now (and sharing some contact of theirs).
Again super sorry.

[Ian Banks]

The non-apologies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology) are almost as irritating as the data collection and spam itself:

"I’m the one who sent you the email, and I want to sincerely apologize if it was perceived as spam [...]" (from December)
"I am super sorry that this has been taken wrongly [...]" (my emphasis)

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

"contribute to a interesting os project"

For monetary reward? This is called employment.

"and sharing some contact of theirs"

For monetary reward? This is called "purchasing".

[Kevin Buzzard]

MaxK said:

I am super sorry that this has been taken wrongly, as I said it is a relic of a december exploration I did. The idea is really not to sell anything but to invite the community to contribute to a interesting os project. I thought the interest in lean 4 was shared and working on its futur would have interested the community. As I said in december I am not gathering for new contacts anymore (I don't have any scrapper working or things like that), it is just that most of the people I have contacted have been interested and are discussing with me now (and sharing some contact of theirs).
Again super sorry.

If this is a "relic" then can you explain why I just got spam email from Maxime Michel at Kili technologies 2 minutes ago? Clearly this appalling behaviour is still continuing even after all these complaints.

[Eric Wieser]

Maybe there's a forgotten server somewhere still sending out automated mail?

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Their privacy policy does not have a DPO. This is a blatant violation of the GDPR Law.

[Ian Banks]

I can't find any contact details for Kili at all. @MaxK are you able to provide any kind of contact details (e-mail address even) of someone in a managerial position (other than yourself)?

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Dear @MaxK ,

I am writing to formally request the contact details of Kili Technology's Data Protection Officer (DPO). As per Article 12, Paragraph 4 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), if a data controller does not take action on a data subject's request, they are obligated to inform the data subject without delay, and at the latest within one month, of the reasons for not taking action and provide information on the possibility of lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority and seeking a judicial remedy.

To date, I have not received the requested DPO contact information. I kindly ask that you provide this information within 30 days from the date of this message. Failure to do so may compel me to lodge a formal complaint with the relevant supervisory authorities.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Best regards,
Eli Kogan-Wang

---

Also sent via Mail

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

@Andrés Goens since your Spam-Experience with Kili was more than 30 days ago, you may be able to lodge a formal complaint right now.

[Arthur Paulino]

I simply created a spam filter :shrug:

[Arthur Paulino]

I mean, this is not the ideal solution. It would be much better if there was no such annoyance for the community. But I receive spam from many other sources. And this is just another source.

[MaxK]

Hey, I am working on stopping scheduled email. I do not fully understand why it keeps sending the email as I said yesterday. I am working on it right now. As I said I am not getting new contact it is just that the tool I used in december is activated right now and I don't find a way to stop the scheduled mails. I have contacted the tool admin and have even deleted the template mail but as Kevin said it seems to not stop. I will find a solution asap, I am working on it.

[MaxK]

THanks for the mail Eli

[MaxK]

Eric Wieser said:

Maybe there's a forgotten server somewhere still sending out automated mail?

Yes this is what is happening. There are some "scheduled" sending but removing the intial file doesn't seem to stop. This is why I am waiting for some help from the tool developer team.

[MaxK]

re-hello all, I have finally found where the issues was. I have deleted the full extension to remediate and the original list of email (which was still findable by the tool because of the versioning of gsheet, even though I thought I had removed it).
I am sorry it took this proportion in 24 hours.

[MaxK]

As I said to Eli, I contacted some lean 4 community members regarding a potential contribution proposal related to discussions on the Lean 4 forum, as it seemed relevant to your expertise. Since there was no interest, I have deleted your contact information in accordance with data minimization principles under GDPR.

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Panicking and deleting data is also not gdpr compliance (keywords data loss and data integrity) @MaxK

[Notification Bot]

46 messages were moved here from #general > ✔ mail from ABAKA AI by Johan Commelin.

[Notification Bot]

Yaël Dillies has marked this topic as unresolved.

[Asei Inoue]

I think the mail from abaka AI is not a spam, which is simply interesting invitation. but sending a lot of email is just a spam, which is not accepted by community…

[Vasily Ilin]

Why do people view this email negatively, apart from the possibly scraped emails (most academic's emails are probably posted on the internet openly, so I don't see this as a big issue anyway)?
I ask because I filled out their form (including the three exercises there), and received a request to schedule a meeting with them. Is there anything I should be aware of when considering collaborating with them?

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

Because I don't like being lied to, as well as dealing with people that handle my data sloppily, as well as in violation of the law.

I'm sure the company is able to cough up some money to people to generate training data for them, else they wouldn't be doing this spamming campaign.

[Vasily Ilin]

Don't they offer pretty good pay though? I see this as no different from receiving an employment email from some tech company with an offer to interview (I personally don't mind and even welcome them because more options is better than fewer options).
Regardless of the data handling issue, I sense that there is a negative sentiment regarding this whole operation. Why is that?

[Ruben Van de Velde]

There are thousands of people on this zulip, none of whom have entered their email address with the expectation that it would be used for indiscriminate cold emailing for opportunities like this. I imagine people would be less bothered if those were individual emails sent to that person for a specific reason. (I find recruiters emailing out of the blue without having the slightest clue who I am or why I'd be a good candidate equally annoying, fwiw.) There's a whole stream on this server for people to announce job positions as well.

[Eli Kogan-Wang]

They also obviously did not hand check before sending. I have no involvement with the lean community except for 1 message 3 years ago.

If every project that was looking for lean or in general technical specialists would do stuff like this and a large amount of people would find this cool we would suffer a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons where the law-abiding not-spamming companies find it more difficult to find employees, while it becomes more difficult for job-seekers to find relevant employment