> Even in this day and age, there are plenty of people with stable IPs >
With hashing, a given IP would always give the same hash. So this uniqueness property would remain for people with stable IPs. On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote: > This is one of those perennial proposals that never quite seems to take > off; I can remember having some version of this discussion back in 2008, > and I know that some of our earliest edits show a partially obscured IP > address, not the whole thing. It might require Brion or Tim or someone else > of that length of experience to explain the original thinking. > > Some of the "pros" of keeping the IP address as the "username" for > unregistered users: > > - Even in this day and age, there are plenty of people with stable IPs; > they choose to edit as unregistered users for philosophical reasons, and > their IP's edit history is essentially their own editing history > - Especially on smaller projects (but also big ones), range blocks are > usually calculated and applied by administrators, not > checkusers/stewards. > > > Some of the "cons" of publishing the IP address as the username: > > - Privacy - IPv6 addresses in particular are including more and more > very specific information that could be used to link RealLife Name with > the > edits. (My own ISP now gives enough information in many cases to narrow > geolocation down to a one-block radius - a big change from 2 years ago > when > geolocation was about an 800 mile radius.) > - Privacy - more and more jurisdictions consider a person's IP address > to be "private" information. Our page histories could be considered one > gigantic privacy violation. > - Increasingly dynamic IP addresses, often rotating within very large > ranges that no longer link with any certainty to geolocation > - Freaked out new users who didn't really get that their IP address was > going to be very publicly displayed. > > > I'm pretty sure there are a whole pile more pros and cons that we can pull > out of the archives from various mailing lists, and I know that there have > periodically been discussions amongst developers and the rest of the > engineering team to try to come up with a "better way" - but like many > other interesting, good and even potentially necessary ideas, it's never > made it to the top of the priority heap. > > Putting on my checkuser hat for just a minute...it's essential information > for having any chance at all of identifying multiple accounts or pattern > editing; however, the tables used by checkusers are non-public so > Checkusers continuing to have access to IP data should not be an issue. > > Risker/Anne > > > On 11 July 2014 10:25, Tyler Romeo <tylerro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I agree that it’s a double standard, but looking at the bright side, it > > becomes a big encouragement to anonymous users to register and log in. > The > > Account Creation Experience Team (or whoever the hell is in charge of > that) > > can correct me, but I would imagine that we would see a big drop in > > registered accounts if IPs were hashed. > > > > Also, it’d be really annoying to have hashes as usernames, so we’d have > to > > think of an alternative scheme that makes things more readable. > > -- > > Tyler Romeo > > 0x405D34A7C86B42DF > > > > From: Gilles Dubuc <gil...@wikimedia.org> > > Reply: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> > > Date: July 11, 2014 at 9:34:18 > > To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> > > Subject: [Wikitech-l] Anonymous editors & IP addresses > > > > This interesting bot showed up on hackernews today: > > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018284 > > > > While in this instance the access to anonymous' editors IP addresses is > > definitely useful in terms of identifying edits with probable conflict of > > interest, it makes me wonder what the history is behind the fact that > > anonymous editors are identified by their IP addresses on WMF-hosted > wikis. > > > > IP addresses are closely guarded for registered users, why wouldn't > > anonymous users be identified by a hash of their IP address in order to > > protect their privacy as well? The exact same functionality of being able > > to see all edits by a given anonymous IP would still exist, the IP itself > > just wouldn't be publicly available, protected with the same access > rights > > as registered users'. > > > > The "use case" that makes me think of that is someone living in a > > totalitarian regime making a sensitive edit and forgetting that they're > > logged out. Or just being unaware that being anonymous on the wiki > doesn't > > mean that their local authorities can figure out who they are based on IP > > address and time. Understanding that they're somewhat protected when > logged > > in and not when logged out requires a certain level of technical > > understanding. The easy way out of this argument is to state that these > > users should be using Tor or something similar. But I still wonder why we > > have this double standard of protecting registered users' privacy in > > regards to IP addresses and not applying the same for anonymous users, > when > > simple hashing would do the job. > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
