[Analytics] Mobile and CheckUser (Was [mobile-l] Wikipedia App User Agents)

> > Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal > under the new privacy policy, really goes agains the wishes of the community > as they do not wish to be finger printed. I don't think that "the wishes of the community" have been established and the whole point of checkuser is that it allows for fingerprinting. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 4:20 AM, Nuria Ruiz &lt;nuria(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: > > > >As a checkuser, user agents are an important part of my workflow for > > identifying that multiple accounts are owned by the same person. > > So I'm going to have to argue for including more information in the > > user agent. > > Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal > under the new privacy policy, really goes agains the wishes of the community > as they do not wish to be finger printed. > See: > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:EventLogging/UserAgentSanitization or > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy > There has been plenty more discussions about this on analytics e-mail > list. > > > >Your proposed user agent would basically mean that every single person > > using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would > > >be indistinguishable from each other. This would, unfortunately, lead to > > lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. > > However, note that the UA " WikipediaApp/<version> > <OS>/<form-factor>/<version>" clearly satisfies the use case of the mobile > team. It provides as much information as they need from their user without > sending any private data. > > Can you please list what is your use case? Namely how are you > identifying "false" accounts. Perhaps relying on the user agent to do so is > not the best strategy going forward. Have in mind that with the old privacy > policy UA data needed to be discarded after 90 days. With the new policy > there is more legal room but given community feedback analytics team is > planning on aggregating all UA information in the future. This means that UA > data will not be stored (or reported) per user or request but rather > agreggated (as in "4% of users use iPhone"). > > We gathered recently information from all teams as to use cases > pertaining UA data collection: > > https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Internal/EventLogging/PrivateDa…. > > Let's talk about your use case and add it to the document that already > exists describing usages of user agent data, this document was sent out to > all teams couple months ago but there is no description of your use case > there: > > https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/document/d/1bp6qrvYi0Mh7l0s1psGnXEE… > > > > > > > On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Dan Garry &lt;dgarry(a)wikimedia.org&gt; > wrote: >> >> Hey Yuvi, >> >> As a checkuser, user agents are an important part of my workflow for >> identifying that multiple accounts are owned by the same person. So I'm >> going to have to argue for including more information in the user agent. >> Your proposed user agent would basically mean that every single person using >> the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would be >> indistinguishable from each other. This would, unfortunately, lead to lots >> of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. >> >> Here's an example of a user agent from an iPhone using Safari: >> Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; zh-tw) >> AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 >> Safari/6533.18.5 >> >> Look at all of that wonderful information! ;-) In general, the more >> information you can include without breaching the user's privacy, the >> better. >> >> I'd be happy to work with you on this. >> >> Thanks, >> Dan >> >> P.S. You may also want to consult with the legal team, to ensure that >> an unacceptable levels of private information are not given out. They would >> also make a complement for me; I would likely be pulling in the direction of >> "MOAR INFORMATION!", whereas they would likely be pulling in the direction >> of "LESS INFORMATION!". :-) >> >> >> On 26 March 2014 15:00, Yuvi Panda &lt;yuvipanda(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: >>> >>> Add Analytics to cc, as I think they'll be interested as well :) >>> >>> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:20 AM, Yuvi Panda &lt;yuvipanda(a)gmail.com&gt; >>> wrote: >>> > Hello! >>> > >>> > We are getting closer to a general release of the Wikipedia Android >>> > and iOS apps, and I think we should standardize on a User-Agent >>> > format. The old app just appended an identifier in front of the >>> > phone's default UA[1] but I think we can do better, to avoid >>> > privacy >>> > concerns[2]. >>> > >>> > How about: >>> > >>> > WikipediaApp/<version> <OS>/<form-factor>/<version> >>> > >>> > This gives us all the info we need (App version, OS, Form Factor >>> > (Tablet / Phone) and OS version) without giving away too much. It >>> > is >>> > also fairly simple to construct and parse. >>> > >>> > For the latest alpha, my Nexus 4 would generate >>> > >>> > WikipediaApp/32 Android/Phone/4.4 >>> > >>> > While an iOS device might generate >>> > >>> > WkipediaApp/2.0 iOS/Phone/7.1 >>> > >>> > form-factor would just be Phone|Tablet for now, and can be expanded >>> > later if necessary. >>> > >>> > Thoughts? >>> > >>> > [1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile/User_agents#Apps >>> > [2]: >>> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/EventLogging/UserAgentSanitization >>> > -- >>> > Yuvi Panda T >>> > http://yuvi.in/blog >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Yuvi Panda T >>> http://yuvi.in/blog >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Analytics mailing list >>> Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Dan Garry >> Associate Product Manager for Platform >> Wikimedia Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Analytics mailing list >> Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Analytics mailing list > Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics > _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics