On 14 November 2011 15:18, Andrew Owens <orderinchao...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I received a complaint today from someone who received a geonotice regarding > the Perth events. Aside from the fact that the geonotice contains a glaring > error, it's raising questions about privacy on Wikipedia. The last thing we > need people to think is that we're some sort of Big Brother establishment > spying on people. As the person raising the issue with me stated, "I have a > login for privacy. How the hell does it know that I'm in Australia/Perth??"
I think there needs to be some general knowledge in the internet community about who knows what. A web server knows where you come from based on widely distributed IP-to-Location databases. If you allow your browser to contact a server, it will know where you are, whether you login or not, unless you always use IP-Address-Randomisation methods such as Tor. I do agree that we shouldn't publicise the knowledge about their location with them, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The less people know about these issues, the less they can worry. The underlying issue is far too broad for any typical internet user to comprehend. In many ways it would be good to reverse the impression that people have about logging into Wikipedia being more anonymous than not logging in. Even if you use RequestPolicy+Private Browsing(etc.......) you will still have long term privacy issues if you login to any websites. Anyone heard of evercookie? It is still simultaneously the best software engineering project and scariest privacy issue I have ever seen. Non-logged-in users are harder to track than logged-in users from the servers point of view, even if you use evercookie-like-methods. If they login, they are giving a server an imprint to base future cookies off, whereas they could conceivably stay reasonably anonymous on a high-traffic website if they stay unlogged in and rely on something like Tor for IP-address (ie., Location) randomisation. Peter _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
