12 ms·
GitHub education pack requesting real name on public profile
- friend_and_foe 3y agoDude Facebook did it, twitter requires a phone number, YouTube requires your details in a lot of scenarios. I remember when we were taught to not dox ourselves online, the change in that tone interestingly coincides with the rise in malware being published by these companies. Reddit will do it eventually too.
- Sayrus 3y agoEnrolling into GitHub education already required a school email which usually contains your name or school documents which most definitely have your name on it. The change being discussed is not about sharing your name with Microsoft GitHub but about having it on your profile. Your profile is shared to third-party such as apps with the right OAuth scope.
- planede 3y agoA couple of years ago I verified that they really only just looked for *.edu.* in the domain part of the email address. I could easily enroll with something like john@edu.my.domain.com . I reported it but they didn't give a damn.
- elashri 3y agoWhile they did not respond to your report. They currently definitely make it hard to pull something like this, as they will ask for real docs to prove that you are a student.
- planede 3y agoOh, they did respond, they just wrote that they don't give a damn. I guess they care now. As I remember this was way before the Microsoft acquisition though, so there is that.
- elashri 3y agoBefore MS acquisition, they were a small player. The GitHub education pack was much smaller in terms of what it offers than today. This means it was less of an abuse target, and probably some of the contracts between providers and GitHub is that they must have a restricted student verification process. They afforded to ignore that before, but can't today.
- elric 3y agoAre you saying we should just roll over and accept this? Because somehow these companies have become trustworthy?
- friend_and_foe 3y agoNo, I thought my malware peddling accusation against them made that clear. I'm saying all the big corp websites are going to do it and you should jump ship now to the real internet, where people still host websites and run services for fun and a little profit on the side. I wouldn't dream of committing new code to github, or having a twitter, Facebook or google account and I can't understand why so many people cling to these honestly mediocre at best websites.
- weikju 3y agoWhat are they going to do? When they first install their browser (even Firefox!), the default tabs are littered with these malware. Their start menu as well. Ads on TV. News on TV. QR codes and URLs everywhere "visit our instagram page! Follow us on Twitter!" This IS the Internet for most people... And it was built by people like us who should know better :(
- Pannoniae 3y agoYup, in my university, lots of things like societies etc. are on instagram and facebook. I don't have any, so I can't really participate. Ah well, it's the price for not getting in the loop of soycial media
- HeckFeck 3y agoI agree in principle but it is basically at the expense of having an age-appropriate social life anywhere that isn't online - ironic. Practically everything around me in the 20s-30s age range is organised on walled garden social media. I also hear offhand that when seeking relationships you need some online presence or you will be seen as suspicious.
- 3y ago
- fernvenue 3y agoThe problem here, is actually require you to share real name on PUBLIC PROFILE, so everyone can see, not just GitHub employee, I believe this has nothing to do with GitHub needing to verify my identity, it can ask for my personal information privately. By the way, I feel that your point doesn't hold true in other situations as well. Just because someone took my coat, it doesn't mean I should also give them my underwear.
- snovv_crash 3y agoThe moment FB started requiring this is the day it started dieing. Everyone moved to Instagram which is also owned by Meta now but doesn't have the requirement.
- jkaplowitz 3y agoFacebook has always officially had a real name requirement. The main difference between theirs and the much more famous one which Google+ had is that Facebook has traditionally not been proactive about enforcing theirs, whereas Google engineers controversially made an attempt to implement the official policy in code like any other specification. (Disclosure: although I worked for Google years ago and did read an internal memo back then from employees which complained about this policy, my comment is not based on any secret internal knowledge. My own job had nothing to do with Google+ or the real names policy.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Condition1952 3y agoIsn’t “John Smith” a real name? There’s even people who use it on a daily basis
- dijit 3y agothere was a time that it was considered "the most common name in England". So, yeah, I assume there are many people using it on a daily basis, more than anyone else at one point in history for a particular geographic distribution. However, this may actually have been a myth, since I can't seem to find any data to back up this claim.
- cedws 3y agoCan write literally any name, if they complain it doesn't match the ID they have on file, say that's your deadname. Simple as that. GitHub as an organisation is very politically correct and I doubt they'd contest it.
- siva7 3y ago[dead]
- fernvenue 3y agoEdward Snowden said "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
- weikju 3y agoUnless you posted that sarcastically (hard to read on the internet), it's interesting you posted that under a pseudonym using what looks like an icloud "hide my email" address...
- TDiblik 3y agoYep, few of my classmates had a problem with it. Just change your name temporarily and then change it back :/ ... sucks but works atm
- Aerbil313 3y agoI did this unintentionally.. so this is the reason it worked.
- bArray 3y agoI now regularly get messages and a constant banner across GitHub about needing 2FA. I don't want to hook my phone up to another service and I don't consider a phone proper security. I'll move my code somewhere else where they don't force their 'security measures' on me and have bots scraping my code to build an AI to replace me.
- heinrich5991 3y agoYou can do TOTP on any general purpose computer.
- circuit10 3y agoI can even do it on my calculator It’s also built into some password managers
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- master-lincoln 3y ago2FA != phone number needed There are other options
- rjmunro 3y agoThese messages are correct. You need 2FA. Passwords alone are not good enough security. It doesn't have to be via your phone if you don't want it to be. You can buy a YubiKey or similar, or use something like https://github.com/simnalamburt/macos-totp-cli https://github.com/simnalamburt/macos-totp-cli (I haven't tried it, just the first thing I found in a google search).
- hk1337 3y agoI get the desire for privacy and such but considering what GitHub is hosting, if you believe in something you sign your name to it. I don’t mean believe in GitHub but in the projects your keeping on GitHub. You can put your name out there without doxxing yourself. I would be more worried about what Google is doing with Chrome than GitHub requiring a name.
- Pannoniae 3y ago"if you believe in something you sign your name to it" Without a beat, the next thing from this is "If you believe in this, you deserve to be fired." No thanks.
- vsnf 3y agoWhat if one were a progressive student in an oppressive country contributing to or writing code for a repo that the regime finds objectionable?
- notRobot 3y ago> You can put your name out there without doxxing yourself. No, you literally cannot in 2023. It's trivial to put together a very comprehensive profile on a person from all the data that has been leaked or is being sold with nothing but a name as a starting point. > If you believe in something you sign your name to it I do not see why that should ever be a requirement. You are free to take a project less seriously solely because you don't know the authors' legal names (although this makes literally no sense to me), but why should that be a rigid requirement?
- softveda 3y agoGithub education is broken. They have automated it and it doesn’t work in edge cases. There is no manual intervention. I got denied because - my university is in city A and I study online in city B. It detects my location automatically and denies because I am not in my university campus. Wtf. - they have an alternate to upload some documents to prove otherwise. Whatever documents my non-US university has is declined by their ML. Also you cannot upload pdf docs. Need to take a picture of pdf to upload.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aulin 3y agowhat's the point of github education now that they have unlimited private repos for everyone?
- welpo 3y agoThe GitHub Student Developer Pack: https://education.github.com/pack/offers https://education.github.com/pack/offers
- chrisandchris 3y agoThis page is not available when not logged in and after logging in does not really disclose IMHO what the Student Developer Pack offers.
- jffry 3y agoThis link should be visible: https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack Short answer: - Free GitHub Pro - A few hundred bucks of free credits on DigitalOcean, Azure, Heroku - A few different free domain registration offers - A few coding courses - Some other software and SaaS at no cost
- xigoi 3y agoYou can get Copilot for free if that's your thing.
- thenerdhead 3y agoMore complicated than getting the NFL Sunday Ticket. Why can’t they just verify an edu email like the rest of the world? Afraid of people abusing it?
- Larrikin 3y agoAs far as I can tell, the entire rest of the world is also moving away from edu address verification. Seems like more and more schools now let you keep your edu address permanently. I almost never see anywhere to easily get educational discounts that doesn't require some kind of verification you are currently a student. Seems like Apple is the only major company without hard verification, but they seem to have a soft policy that allows buying devices at a discount for your child's, niece's, cousin's, etc school expenses
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoThe new hotness for student status verification is ID.me. This is, despite some controversy, still the interface to various US Federal agency sites, and other sites as well. ID.me has a pretty rigorous verification system. They will not only verify your student status, they can verify qualified teachers/educators, HCPs, veterans, and recipients of public benefits. So it's sort of one-stop-shopping for a verification broker who will then introduce you to whatever site wants to authenticate you. It was interesting, because I happened to graduate from college in May, much to my own surprise, and ID.me soon notified me that my student status had expired. I don't know if it was on a timer-deadline, or linked to the graduation event, but whichever it was, they were on the ball. LinkedIn uses email addresses to verify employees, for example my own employer set up a thing, but it doesn't accept either of the work email addresses I've been issued, perhaps because we've got "two tiers" of employees and my email looks different from the full-timers'. And you're right about folks keeping our .edu addresses in perpetuity. I worked for an .edu for 4 months, 24 years ago, and I still have access to, and control of, my email address there, in terms of where it forwards. I have no storage or other access, just the ability to point it somewhere.
- 22c 3y ago"Real name policies" might be or eventually become illegal in some jurisdictions. https://computersciencewiki.org/index.php/Right_to_anonymity https://computersciencewiki.org/index.php/Right_to_anonymity https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17005746/facebook-real-name-policy-illegal-german-court-rules https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17005746/facebook-real-na... https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles/australian-privacy-principles-guidelines/chapter-2-app-2-anonymity-and-pseudonymity https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principle...