
Keep Your GitHub Email Address Private - JiPi
https://github.com/blog/1580-keep-your-email-private
======
nikcub
The obvious evolution of this would be to host email and allow users to
forward:

    
    
      username@github.io -> useremail
    

The fake non-routable emails can be a problem when you have to get in touch
with contributors who are no longer active on Github.

Saw this problem in the bootstrap project where we still can't get in touch
with ~10% of users to get them to approve the addition of an MIT license:

[https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/2054](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/2054)

~~~
simonw
This would make it trivial to spam every user of GitHub though, by first
spidering the site for public usernames.

------
signed0
As someone who's had recruiters find my personal email via my GitHub commits,
this is a welcome feature.

~~~
welder
Why does everyone hate recruiters? I'm a developer and I just don't get why
other devs hate them so much.

See them for what they are(sales people wanting you as their next product) and
get over it.

~~~
jere
It's a sign of how spoiled we are that we complain when people try to find us
employment.

~~~
wink
They're trying to cash in a fat bonus, not getting people a job first and
foremost. At least the ones who message me after not reading my profile, just
having a single buzzword match.

------
absherwin
Anyone seriously worried about privacy should also ensure that their gravatar
doesn't point to their real email address, especially if there's a simple
relationship between the email addresss and GitHub username.

Edit: Apparently, this doesn't re-write the actual repo so anyone seriously
interested in e-mail addresses will be unaffected. It was already easier to
get e-mails via cloning rather than through scraping or the API.

------
stormbrew
This seems kind of like privacy theatre to me. What's to stop someone from
just cloning your repos and deriving your email from the commit attributes?

~~~
plorkyeran
The actual commits will have the fake address. The change isn't that they're
hiding the email addresses in the UI; it's that they've added the option to
use a fake email address for commits made via the web UI while still receiving
notification emails from Github.

------
MrGando
Awesome, lately privacy has become a real concern for me... my inbox filled
with Recruiter e-mails will also like this!

------
smokey42
Not going to help. Cloning some public repo will expose all emails you
commited with anyway.

~~~
csense
Which is why you shouldn't put a real email address in commits [1].

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-
address-...](https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-address-
private)

------
mapleoin
So how is this different from using any fake email address?

~~~
d0vs
Shut up. Is it necessary to bash every single new feature because it can be
done another way?

~~~
mapleoin
I can't tell if you're being ironic or not. My question was honest, though. I
honestly don't understand this feature.

