
Ask HN: GitHub notification spam using private forks? - blattimwind
I noticed a couple of emails from GitHub that I have been subscribed to two UnrealEngine forks, which contain garbage &#x2F; an ad for some project. Both of these private repositories have well over 100k watchers now.<p>Seems to me like GitHub lacks in the validation department not only for for GitHub Pages...
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danielpetrica
It's I can confirm this issue for me. It looks like that someone given all the
Unreal Engine users push rights, this prompted the GitHub system to
automatically subscribing them to the repository.

This prompted a lot of spam which it seems like its breaking the front page,
prompting the unicorn page. If you have this issue try to navigate to a
different page to access your settings and edit the auto-subscription
settings.

To disable this setting got to
[https://github.com/settings/notifications](https://github.com/settings/notifications)
and un-tick the 'Automatically watch repositories' settings.

The repository seems to be these [1] & [2]. I'll advise anyone in the unreal
engine to go and un-watch them as they are full of spam.

[1]
[https://github.com/FlameOfIgnis/UnrealEngine](https://github.com/FlameOfIgnis/UnrealEngine)
[2]
[https://github.com/mad00ness/UnrealEngine](https://github.com/mad00ness/UnrealEngine)

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bambishat
This is what it looked like for a sec:
[https://i.imgur.com/37DnL9n.png](https://i.imgur.com/37DnL9n.png) (while
hovering latest committer name)

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jpetrucc
I'm also seeing this issue - started getting emails this morning about being
subscribed to multiple forks, now I am unable to load GitHub at all

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danielpetrica
It looks that only the dashboard doesn't work as is trying to load all that
spam commits/activity. Other pages like your profile should work.

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jpetrucc
Good call - Thanks!

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mkane848
Just got hit with three myself, but looks like they're already taken down.

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strobe
I also got notifications like this at today.

