Greetings Fellow Comstoks! ([info]fengi) wrote,
@ 2009-07-13 15:11:00
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Question to Fellow Users: Scam or Legit?
Below is the third in a series of emails I've received recently.

1. Has anyone else gotten this?

2. Does it seem legit or is it some type of long form hack/prank?
Dear LiveJournal user,

Last week I invited you to participate in a research project about LiveJournal users' reactions to the January 2009 SUP layoffs and user loyalty to social networking sites. I wanted to let you know that I am still interested in having you participate. This participation consists of two things. First, I will read and analyze your posting(s) about the layoffs. Then I will ask you to participate in a short (not more than half an hour) interview about LiveJournal and other social networking sites. The analysis of the blog postings and interviews will be included in a paper to be presented at an academic conference in October and will be prepared for possible publication in an academic journal thereafter.


If you are interested in participating, please go to http://tinyurl.com/LJCritical and fill out the Informed Consent form that you find there. I will then get in touch with you to schedule an interview.


Thanks in advance for your participation,
Sarah Ford
***********************
Sarah Michele Ford
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts - Amherst
ford@soc.umass.edu
http://snowplow.org/sarah/
Poor Sarah. If she is real, the people she's trying to research are the very ones with reasons - real or imagined - to consent to nothing.

I'm not inclined to help someone who attempts to study a group with something - impersonal spam - which signals dubious intent within the culture. It seems like approaching cops in a "I Smell Bacon" t-shirt. But perhaps I'm more credulous than most.

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[info]kadath
2009-07-13 08:18 pm UTC (link)
See my post. It's legit; she's a real student at UMass Amherst. Who is, I suspect, about to be in a world of hurt when abuse@umass starts getting complaints.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]fengi
2009-07-13 08:32 pm UTC (link)
Upon reflection I realized I set up filters to send everything sent through livejournal to a separate folder, yet this appeared in my main inbox.

Which makes me wonder how Ford managed to get my direct address.

Either she's using some sort of hack, or I haven't set up my security preferences correctly.

Any advice you have would be helpful.

Excuse the cross post of this comment.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]davidkevin
2009-07-13 08:33 pm UTC (link)

Perhaps I am naive or dense, but what has she done which merits complaint?



(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kadath
2009-07-13 08:37 pm UTC (link)
She's sent two additional emails to people who didn't respond to her initial one, a no-no under most university AUPs, since it's borderline spam. Additionally, the pattern of recipients suggests she's running a script that does keyword searches across LJ, including those accounts that have robots.txt enabled, which is another potential AUP violation. I don't know how strictly UMass Amherst interprets their AUP, but at my university, either of those would have gotten you in trouble.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]fengi
2009-07-14 12:59 am UTC (link)
Figured it out:

I'm using yahoo and not entirely adept at reading header code.

Livejournal will bounce email sent to xxxx@livejournal.com it to the user email without an obvious "relayed/sent by livejournal" in the headers.

So it looks like the sender has my email when they don't, and a filter based on "livejournal" in the from field won't work.

Which means the researcher's could have run a program which looked for any post meeting her criteria then created a mailing list based on username@livejournal and spammed everyone.

If one is going to study a subject who receives spams and pranks, a more personalized appeal would produce more positives and less hostility.

You'd think a sociologist who is specializing in online culture would get this, but then again, studying doesn't mean understanding.

Excuse the crosspost.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]theweaselking
2009-07-13 09:48 pm UTC (link)
Unsolicited bulk email.

AKA "spam".

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tx_cronopio
2009-07-13 08:24 pm UTC (link)
Well, on the upside, she does have a umass email.

(Reply to this)


[info]starkyld
2009-07-13 08:34 pm UTC (link)
I'd check with UMass-Amherst's IRB if I were interested in participating but had reservations about her legitimacy, but nothing in the email or consent page raises any red flags for me, so I would be fine with accepting her research aims at face value. I also don't understand why [info]kadath anticipates that she'll be in trouble with her institution. Her solicitation email and informed consent page, though brief, contain pretty much boilerplate information for low-risk human subjects research.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]kadath
2009-07-13 08:38 pm UTC (link)
With the IT department, not with the sociology one.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]theweaselking
2009-07-13 09:49 pm UTC (link)
She's spamming from a university account with a university web page as the spam payload.

This is so far against every real university's AUP that it's gone all the way past "not funny" and looped back to "fucking hilarious".

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]zurcherart
2009-07-13 09:01 pm UTC (link)
I got it.

And on the second email I filled out her permission slip and gave my consent.


Then I wondered if I should have, but decided it was harmless enough.

ETA: I clicked on her blog ... the question she poses there as the topic of her paper is one I have a passing interest in so I will enjoy helping her out.

Edited at 2009-07-13 09:08 pm UTC

(Reply to this)


[info]thekamisama
2009-07-13 09:14 pm UTC (link)
I'm sure it would not be hard to find a number for her in the campus registry and call the Sociology department to find out if it was indeed legitimate.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]fengi
2009-07-14 01:04 am UTC (link)
Yeah, but effort + possibly creepy + I'm not sure I'm interesting in helping a PhD sociology aspirant who can't be bothered to grasp the cultural cues enough to not seem like spam/scam when seeking subjects. Especially when the culture is Livejournal.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
I think the real questions here should be
[info]marieoroumania
2009-07-13 10:32 pm UTC (link)
"Is she hot?" and
"Does she have an LJ?"

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: I think the real questions here should be
[info]fengi
2009-07-14 01:14 am UTC (link)
1. Well her "this is my stats face" is kind of cute.

2. Reading her blog implies that she does, except she doesn't say what it is, which might be an error if you are approaching livejournal users.

Overall, I'm underwhelmed by a researcher who tries to study a culture with a method (impersonal spam) which seems suspicious within the terms of that culture.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]abilard
2009-07-14 01:36 am UTC (link)

Looks like she is a PhD student.  She is probably trying to put together a dissertation with little or no funding from her department.  Online solicitations like this are common in social science departments, especially with grad students desperate to get something done.

(Reply to this)

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