[shkkmo]

If you say "I am a researcher studying X, can you please answer the following questions" then you might be studying a "what", depending on the specific questions.

When you lie about who you are, what your purposes are, and use scary legal language in an attempt to elicit a response, that is absolutely human research. You may be able do those things ethically as scientist but you absolutely need IRB review becausr it is definitely human research.

My guess is that the IRB in this case was not informed of the deceptive nature of some of the emails as lieing is absolutely a red flag that you are doing human research and not just information gathering. Indeed, evaluating such lies for potential harm is an important part of why we have IRBs for psychological and sociological research.