On Thu, 16 Dec 2021, Robert L Mathews via mailop wrote:
While I know what you mean, I think the reason people are up in arms about it
is that it's not solely a spam problem.
This researcher is impersonating a customer of our various services, then
asking questions about how we all handle legally required disclosures for
that customer. If it were a real customer and we sent the wrong answer, that
has legal and financial implications. It can't just be deleted like most
spam.
When my staff originally received it, they didn't know how to handle it.
Although they knew we take legal requirements seriously, they couldn't find
any records related to the supposed person asking the question, so I then
spent 30 minutes trying to locate "Anna Roland, [...] a resident of San
Francisco, California" in our records, composing a helpful reply, and so on.
This is a very poor use of my time, and the upshot is that the researcher
tricked me into spending time participating in their study.
Imagine if I impersonated an ethics committee member and sent messages to
these professors, asking how they handle complaints, in a way that required
an answer so as to not jeopardize their jobs. I doubt they'd be happy when
they discovered the impersonation.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies, http://www.tigertech.net/
Thanks. As someone not in that role I had missed that.
This point needs to be made to the supervisors you wish to complain to.
--
Andrew C. Aitchison Kendal, UK
and...@aitchison.me.uk
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