What's more annoying is that the decision to construct the email as a non-academic "other person" was a CONSCIOUS decision by the research team (most likely the advisor). I don't see what benefit hiding behind the illusion gathered does for the information beyond worrying the recipients wouldn't respond to a more traditional "We are researching CCPA..." style email.
IRB does allow for deception, just to be clear. Its annoying, but sometimes that's what's needed to get genuine responses. HOWEVER, the hoops the team needed to do to justify its use here was very poorly executed.
Implying the law said they had to respond looks like a bigger problem to me. Some people said they wouldn't have ignored email from a researcher. So saying it was for research would have changed the responses.
IRB does allow for deception, just to be clear. Its annoying, but sometimes that's what's needed to get genuine responses. HOWEVER, the hoops the team needed to do to justify its use here was very poorly executed.