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Definitively yes, and not just high-ranking ones. A while ago I have been contacted by a Google recruiter several times over e-mail, which I found bizarre, as

Definitively yes, and not just high-ranking ones. A while ago I have been contacted by a Google recruiter several times over e-mail, which I found bizarre, as I did not apply to any job at that time. I asked the recruiter to disclose where she exactly got my mail from and she dodged the answer. Turns out there's a guy with the same name as me who is also a programmer (except he has been in the field for several years and works on awesome stuff, unlike me) and they were eager to recruit him, since I got the same mail several times over the course of a year from two or three different recruiters. The only thing connecting me and the other guy was our last name. My e-mail address doesn't mention my last name in the slightest, I did not post it publicly (just tried to google it - zero results) and it's not connected in any way to a service where one could figure out the combination of the email, user and password (such as facebook or linkedin). I've also checked the data breaches on haveibeenpwned and I definitively did not use my real name on the services where the data was stolen. Considering that the original guy's e-mail address was lumped in CC (fully visible - how professional of them) I can only think that they essentially did "SELECT * WHERE lastname = 'myname'", spammed all the available e-mail address and hoped for the best.

jimmywanger 10y ago
> Definitively yes, and not just high-ranking ones. > I can only think that they essentially did "SELECT * WHERE lastname = 'myname'", spammed all the available e-mail address I'm pretty sure that's what they did, except they probably did something like trawl external 3rd party databases in order to find your email address. It's a huge leap to go from "definitely yes" to "I can only think". Although I don't approve of it, leaking your email account -> name infromation is very easy to inadvertently do, and I am sure that there's a huge wall between recruiting and Google PII.
- ManlyBread 10y ago
  The e-mail account in question is very rarely used for signups. None of the services - except for Google ones - contain my actual name. As a rule of thumb I simply do not do it. Google is the only company where the name / e-mail association is clear. I can't think about a single other source of information that could have lead a google recruiter to my e-mail address aside from the data that Google itself has. Call it circumstantial evidence, but to me it's very clear what happened there.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > The e-mail account in question is very rarely used for signups.... > I can't think about a single other source of information... It only takes one slip up. > Call it circumstantial evidence, but to me it's very clear what happened there. You sort of have to pick one. Google is paranoid about PII. Most recruiters at Google are contractors, not allowed to access any PII. Heck, even as a high level engineer/manager, you're not allowed to see PII unless you have a specific business reason or work on an abuse or security team where you have business reasons to see the information, and even then the access is logged and traced. My question for you is, even if you believe this is the case, are you still using Google services?

jimmywanger 10y ago

> Definitively yes, and not just high-ranking ones. > I can only think that they essentially did "SELECT * WHERE lastname = 'myname'", spammed all the available e-mail address I'm pretty sure that's what they did, except they probably did something like trawl external 3rd party databases in order to find your email address. It's a huge leap to go from "definitely yes" to "I can only think". Although I don't approve of it, leaking your email account -> name infromation is very easy to inadvertently do, and I am sure that there's a huge wall between recruiting and Google PII.

ManlyBread 10y ago
The e-mail account in question is very rarely used for signups. None of the services - except for Google ones - contain my actual name. As a rule of thumb I simply do not do it. Google is the only company where the name / e-mail association is clear. I can't think about a single other source of information that could have lead a google recruiter to my e-mail address aside from the data that Google itself has. Call it circumstantial evidence, but to me it's very clear what happened there.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > The e-mail account in question is very rarely used for signups.... > I can't think about a single other source of information... It only takes one slip up. > Call it circumstantial evidence, but to me it's very clear what happened there. You sort of have to pick one. Google is paranoid about PII. Most recruiters at Google are contractors, not allowed to access any PII. Heck, even as a high level engineer/manager, you're not allowed to see PII unless you have a specific business reason or work on an abuse or security team where you have business reasons to see the information, and even then the access is logged and traced. My question for you is, even if you believe this is the case, are you still using Google services?