Why finding a GitHub user's email is harder than you'd think

The process described in the article is an intricate method for resolving GitHub usernames to real-world email addresses. This involves several steps:

1. Identify Relevant Data: Determine which parts of the vast GitHub activity logs (stored as monthly archives) are likely to contain data relevant to a specific user.

2. Data Ingestion and Processing:

   • Stream and decompress large volumes of JSON data from these archives.
   • Maintain a comprehensive database of possible email local parts (the part before '@') based on SHA-1 hashes, which helps in reversing obfuscated emails found within the logs.

3. Identity Correlation:

   • Create an index that correlates GitHub usernames with author names across all historical data to establish consistent identity patterns.

4. Deduplication and Validation:

   • Ensure that each resolved email address is unique and not already associated with another user.
   • Verify the validity of the email addresses by attempting to send a test message (SMTP validation).

5. API Endpoint:

   • Provide an API endpoint (https://peopledb.io/api/v1/people?github_login=octocat) that returns all relevant information about a GitHub username, including linked LinkedIn profiles and email

Read the full article at DEV Community

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