Update: I've been receiving mails of people asking me who I am. I've already said it in the post. Also why am I wasting people's time? I've said that too. Also requests for me to stop. I already said I'm stopping. Please read the post properly from beginning to end before contacting me.
Hey there
This is the last post I'm making on this blog. It was a fun experiment, I hope atleast some of you did find it useful, whether for making friends or just having a laugh.
Perhaps you thought IITD Social was an official group/club/institution, well no, it wasn't. I'm Samuel and I'm a fresher (2018 batch) from the biotech department. I sent the mails and made the blog because I was bored first and foremost, and secondly because I thought it would be fun.
It was anonymous because a) anonymous is fun and b) I could face DisCo. But now I don't think that's likely, everybody is semi-spamming us anyways.
As for how I did it (and how you could do it too)....
The complete list of IITD email IDs can be obtained from the internal IITD site (link). I found it easiest to take the lists of students registered to COL100 and APL100 because that ensures all freshers get my emails. And sending the mails is an easy job too, you could write a script for it or if you're lazy like me you could use Excel+Word+Outlook and the Mail merge feature. For that you start by copy-pasting the list of email IDs to excel, followed by typing the content of the mail in a word document. Then use mail merge feature in word. But you need to configure your email in Outlook first to do that. If you're using Gmail then don't use the default configuration on outlook, use IMAP. I'm not providing any more details than this, that would be handholding.
I'm waiting to see if someone else actually takes the initiative to spam stuff, even if only for the humour value. As far as I know iitd mailboxes have no spam filter so you could in theory write a script sending thousands of mails to each person.
And while you're at it, I'd also like to point out that Google form submissions (which is what 90% of event registrations are using) are completely non-verifyable. Which means you could fill a form on behalf of someone else or even write a script to spam them (with either garbage values or misleading data).
I'm not necessarily advocating that people take up these measures; in fact most people would find it a waste of their time... I'm just pointing how vulnerable to fraud our current systems are, and sometimes the only way to get a better system going is to blow a hole through the existing one.
If it were up to me I'd create an entire social network dedicated to IIT ... But I can't code so I'll have to hire someone, and that ain't happening anytime soon.
I know some people were looking forward to more anonymous questionnaires in the future. If you really want something like that, you could contact the BSW or whoever and get it done properly. From what I can make out, it's an easy enough task for the reps. I can assist you in this, it's just that I'm not personally motivated to go contact them and get it done.
And if there's anything else that you wish to see happening in IIT, try actually organising it or suggesting your ideas to people who would be interested in organising it. Yeah, the "be the change you wish to see" kind of trope. Because it's not a difficult job to introduce something new, you just need the motivation to do it.
P.S. I'm not revealing the identities behind the anonymous submissions people made, don't ask me for them.
Hey there
This is the last post I'm making on this blog. It was a fun experiment, I hope atleast some of you did find it useful, whether for making friends or just having a laugh.
Perhaps you thought IITD Social was an official group/club/institution, well no, it wasn't. I'm Samuel and I'm a fresher (2018 batch) from the biotech department. I sent the mails and made the blog because I was bored first and foremost, and secondly because I thought it would be fun.
It was anonymous because a) anonymous is fun and b) I could face DisCo. But now I don't think that's likely, everybody is semi-spamming us anyways.
As for how I did it (and how you could do it too)....
The complete list of IITD email IDs can be obtained from the internal IITD site (link). I found it easiest to take the lists of students registered to COL100 and APL100 because that ensures all freshers get my emails. And sending the mails is an easy job too, you could write a script for it or if you're lazy like me you could use Excel+Word+Outlook and the Mail merge feature. For that you start by copy-pasting the list of email IDs to excel, followed by typing the content of the mail in a word document. Then use mail merge feature in word. But you need to configure your email in Outlook first to do that. If you're using Gmail then don't use the default configuration on outlook, use IMAP. I'm not providing any more details than this, that would be handholding.
I'm waiting to see if someone else actually takes the initiative to spam stuff, even if only for the humour value. As far as I know iitd mailboxes have no spam filter so you could in theory write a script sending thousands of mails to each person.
And while you're at it, I'd also like to point out that Google form submissions (which is what 90% of event registrations are using) are completely non-verifyable. Which means you could fill a form on behalf of someone else or even write a script to spam them (with either garbage values or misleading data).
I'm not necessarily advocating that people take up these measures; in fact most people would find it a waste of their time... I'm just pointing how vulnerable to fraud our current systems are, and sometimes the only way to get a better system going is to blow a hole through the existing one.
If it were up to me I'd create an entire social network dedicated to IIT ... But I can't code so I'll have to hire someone, and that ain't happening anytime soon.
I know some people were looking forward to more anonymous questionnaires in the future. If you really want something like that, you could contact the BSW or whoever and get it done properly. From what I can make out, it's an easy enough task for the reps. I can assist you in this, it's just that I'm not personally motivated to go contact them and get it done.
And if there's anything else that you wish to see happening in IIT, try actually organising it or suggesting your ideas to people who would be interested in organising it. Yeah, the "be the change you wish to see" kind of trope. Because it's not a difficult job to introduce something new, you just need the motivation to do it.
P.S. I'm not revealing the identities behind the anonymous submissions people made, don't ask me for them.