It may have felt like a deception, but there's plenty of bad legal takes on the Internet. For this to be a deception, the sender would have to know for certain

It may have felt like a deception, but there's plenty of bad legal takes on the Internet. For this to be a deception, the sender would have to know for certain that the statute doesn't apply in this case. Could be they did, but then I missed that. Just as likely, they genuinely thought this correct. The deception was hiding that this was a study, not a genuine request. Lying about or misrepresenting the goals of a study is deception research. There's strict guidelines for that... in the "soft" sciences (APA guidelines). CS is a bit behind and seems intent on reinventing the wheel :s.