To anyone doing this; please stop. Cold-contact unsolicited outreach for sales i...

AussieWog93 · on July 31, 2021

I disagree with you there. There's definitely a way to do it right.

Copy-pasted templates are never appreciated, but hand-written, personalised outreach that considers the recipient's situation can go down well.

NetToolKit · on July 31, 2021

And unfortunately, people who hand write personalised outreach don't know if the recipient is like you or the parent poster.

johnchristopher · on July 31, 2021

Careful. This is getting into GDPR territory.

AussieWog93 · on July 31, 2021

In what way?

johnchristopher · on July 31, 2021

Article 4-11:

> Consent of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.

And 6-1:

> Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:

> the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;

So whether consent is given or not depends on what people would write in their HN bio next to their email.

AussieWog93 · on July 31, 2021

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think Googling a person's email address and contacting them in regards to something they posted on HN qualifies as "processing of personal data".

johnchristopher · on July 31, 2021

This is exactly what GDPR is for.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

> Examples of processing include:

> [..]

> sending promotional emails*;

> [..]