forked from cadey/xesite
princeton scam research post
Signed-off-by: Xe <me@christine.website>
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title: I Was Part of a Human Subject Research Study Without My Consent
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date: 2021-12-17
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author: ectamorph
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---
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[Note for the readers, I usually try to do one post per week. This is not that
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post this week. I am just frustrated by being used as a human subject in a
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Princeton study without my consent. If you are ever in a position to be doing
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this kind of survey, please don't send legal threats around
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recklessly.](conversation://Cadey/coffee)
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This is a response to [CCPA Scam November
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2021](https://blog.freeradical.zone/post/ccpa-scam-2021-12/) from the
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[freeradical.zone](https://blog.freeradical.zone/) blog. On or about 2021-12-11
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11:29 PM I got an email from [Maya Mishina](mailto:mayamishina@novatormail.ru)
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with the following contents:
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> To Whom It May Concern:
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>
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> My name is Maya Mishina, and I am a resident of Novosibirsk, Russia. I have a
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> few questions about your process for responding to California Consumer Privacy
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> Act (CCPA) data access requests:
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>
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> 1. Would you process a CCPA data access request from me even though I am not a
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> resident of California?
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> 2. Do you process CCPA data access requests via email, a website, or
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> telephone? If via a website, what is the URL I should go to?
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> 3. What personal information do I have to submit for you to verify and process
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> a CCPA data access request?
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> 4. What information do you provide in response to a CCPA data access request?
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>
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> To be clear, I am not submitting a data access request at this time. My
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> questions are about your process for when I do submit a request.
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>
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> Thank you in advance for your answers to these questions. If there is a better
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> contact for processing CCPA requests regarding christine.website, I kindly ask
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> that you forward my request to them.
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>
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> I look forward to your reply without undue delay and at most within 45 days of
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> this email, as required by Section 1798.130 of the California Civil Code.
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>
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> Sincerely,
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>
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> Maya Mishina
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This scared the shit out of me. My blog is a passion project that I do as a way
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to get better at writing. I almost contacted a lawyer. This should probably have
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stood out as suspect to me, however I am a believer that people have a right to
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privacy and that they should be able to be forgotten.
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I go out of my way to ensure that this website handles as little user data as
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possible. I have gone so far to do this that the only unique identifiers I deal
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with are IP addresses, but even then only a tiny fraction of those IP addresses
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even get to my server because I use Cloudflare for caching. I probably need to
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set up some kind of proper log rotation in my server, but right now there are
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only three things collected by my site:
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1. If you are a patron to my site, your name shows up on [/patrons](/patrons).
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This queries the Patreon API to get the display name that you configured in
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your account and is refreshed every time the site restarts.
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2. If you send me a [Webmention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention), they
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will be shown on the footer of the website. They are stored in a SQLite
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database on the same server. I can remove entries from that table upon
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request.
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3. Your IP address is recorded in `/var/log/nginx/xesite.access.log` in common
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log format on my server which is located in the Netherlands. Here is an
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example of what this looks like:
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```
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127.0.0.1 - - [18/Dec/2021:04:04:57 +0000] "GET /security.txt HTTP/1.1" 404 2110 "-" "Go-http-client/2.0"
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```
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No other data is stored. Any intermediate things in the system journal disappear
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after an hour or two because my journal is limited to 512 MB and my services are
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chatty.
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Here is what the application logged for that request:
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```
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Dec 18 04:04:57 lufta xesite-start[2121878]: 2021-12-18T04:04:57.585717Z INFO xesite/2.3.0: - "GET /security.txt HTTP/1.1" 404 "-" "Go-http-client/2.0" 12.474µs
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```
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It is literally the bare minimum that I can get away with.
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[Wanna know why there's no comments on this blog? I don't want to have to deal
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with storing user data and doing moderation!](conversation://Cadey/coffee)
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I probably should have consulted a lawyer before drafting this, but here is what
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I replied with:
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> Hello,
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>
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> 1. I can process a CCPA data access request even for people that are not
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> residents of California.
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> 2. My website does not collect personal information, but emailing either
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> me@christine.website or privacy@xeserv.us would be the correct action.
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> 3. My website does not collect personal information, including IP
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> addresses. I keep track of hit counts via CloudFlare analytics, but as
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> far as I know there is no way for me to collect information about a
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> single subject (all I see is aggregate anonymized data). I guess if you
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> give me a public IP address I can dig through the system logs to see if
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> anything pops up.
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> 4. I would provide relevant request logs provided they exist. That is
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> the only information that I could provide and I would be willing to
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> provide it in the industry standard plaintext log format.
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>
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> Please keep in mind this is a blog run by a single person as a passion
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> project to get better at writing. As it is not a corporate endeavor, I
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> don't believe that I need to provide this information at all. However I
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> am willing to search the logs folder to see if anything is there.
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>
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> Please let me know which IP addresses to look up and I will do my best
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> to get you that information as fast as possible.
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>
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> Thanks and be well,
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>
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> Xe
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I should have expected this to be a human research study after the [University
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of Minnesota
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disaster](https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source).
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Overall, I am disappointed in this. I want to have a positive outlook on
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humanity. I want to be able to trust that requests to be forgotten are
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legitimate. I am going to have a harder time doing that now.
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In case you actually do want to make a GDPR/CCPA request, here is the process
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and the rough steps I will take:
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- I will need your Twitter username and any links listed on the Webmentions
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section of any article on my blog if you want those removed. I will require
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you to either tweet a magic phrase and email me a link to it, a DNS TXT
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record on the domain or for you to upload an arbitrary string to a path on
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your server. These processes will help me confirm that you are the person who
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wants the information. Send me an email to `privacy@xeserv.us`. If you want
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access logs deleted, please let me know what IP addresses to delete and I
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will see what I can do.
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- I will prepare a `.zip` file that will contain the following:
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- The email conversation in the industry-standard `.eml` format.
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- Any SQLite rows from my Webmention service in `.csv` format.
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- Any request logs from nginx in `.log` format.
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- This may take up to a week or two. I am only one person and I have a job.
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This blog is not my primary source of income.
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I do not have to offer this service. I am not a business. I am a single person
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that wants to get better at writing. Please do not include wording that gives me
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the impression that you are making a legal threat. I know you are allowed to,
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but it scares the shit out of me when you do that and will make me put your
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request at the end of the list.
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tl;dr: I got phished by trying to be a good netizen. Don't fall for [this
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scam](https://privacystudy.cs.princeton.edu/).
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