Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if this was a case of Hanlon's razor. Some "researcher" thought well ENV vars will certainly show us what we want and that's where the conversation ended without thinking a little harder into what else might be in the vars.
That's not really plausible in the modern legislative environment (pun intended), considering your env vars will contain GDPR-controlled data like your username, at the very least. Combined with the IP address it was collected from, they know who you are and where you live.
