Announcing: The Wikipedia Prize!

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Brian

30 Mar 2015 30 Mar '15

1:25 a.m.

I'm sure many of you recall the Netflix Prize <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize>. This is that, for Wikipedia! Although the initial goal of the Netflix Prize was to design a collaborative filtering algorithm, it became notorious when the data was used to de-anonymize Netflix users. Researchers proved that given just a user's movie ratings on one site, you can plug those ratings into another site, such as the IMDB. You can then take that information, and with some Google searches and optionally a bit of cash (for websites that sell user information, including, in some cases, their SSN) figure out who they are. You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views on the topics they were editing. Here, we'll cut straight to the privacy chase. Using just the full history dump of the English Wikipedia, excluding edits from any logged-in users, identify five people. You must confirm their identities with them, and privately prove to me that you've done this. I will then nominate you as the winner and send you one million Satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin, times 1 million), in addition to updating this thread. I suspect this challenge will be very easy for anyone who is determined. Indeed, even if MediaWiki no longer displayed IP addresses, there would still be enough information to identify people. Completely getting rid of the edit history would largely solve the problem. In the mean time, this Prize will serve as a reminder that when Wikipedia says "Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits." what they mean is, "People will probably be able to figure out where you live and embarrass you." An extra million Satoshis for each NSA employee that you identify. A full bitcoin if you take a selfie with them. Let the games begin! Brian Mingus

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Richard Symonds

30 Mar 30 Mar

7:48 p.m.

I worry that encouraging people to do this to prove a political point could be inappropriate. It's one thing to point out a potential privacy flaw, but paying people to exploit it may be seen as a step too far. Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 29 March 2015 at 23:25, Brian <reflection(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Katherine Casey

8:13 p.m.

Publicly identifying anonymous Wikimedians, especially with reference to their editing histories, is not just an academic way to make a point; it's messing with people's real lives, and it's not something I'm particularly comfortable seeing suggested, especially for a reward, on a wikimedia-hosted listserv. I mean, I see the point you're trying to make, but making people whose privacy may already be imperfect into explicitly-outed victims is rather like burning down the house to prove it ought to have been fireproofed better: you've made your point, but now you have no house. If you want to see if you can identify people using leaky data, ask for volunteers from among those who are comfortable having their identities researched this way and work on identifying them with their consent. On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Richard Symonds < richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

...

I'm sure many of you recall the Netflix Prize <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize>. This is that, for

Wikipedia!

Although the initial goal of the Netflix Prize was to design a collaborative filtering algorithm, it became notorious when the data was used to de-anonymize Netflix users. Researchers proved that given just a user's movie ratings on one site, you can plug those ratings into another site, such as the IMDB. You can then take that information, and with some Google searches and optionally a bit of cash (for websites that sell user information, including, in some cases, their SSN) figure out who they

are.

You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views

the topics they were editing. Here, we'll cut straight to the privacy chase. Using just the full

history

dump of the English Wikipedia, excluding edits from any logged-in users, identify five people. You must confirm their identities with them, and privately prove to me that you've done this. I will then nominate you as the winner and send you one million Satoshis (the smallest unit of

Bitcoin,

times 1 million), in addition to updating this thread. I suspect this challenge will be very easy for anyone who is determined. Indeed, even if MediaWiki no longer displayed IP addresses, there would still be enough information to identify people. Completely getting rid of the edit history would largely solve the problem. In the mean time, this Prize will serve as a reminder that when Wikipedia says "Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits." what they mean is,

"People

will probably be able to figure out where you live and embarrass you." An extra million Satoshis for each NSA employee that you identify. A full bitcoin if you take a selfie with them. Let the games begin! Brian Mingus _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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David Gerard

8:20 p.m.

Context: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2015-March/thread.html Brian believes that Wikimedia recording non-logged-in editors' IPs is *literally* the same as the NSA hoovering up all data they can get anywhere. On 30 March 2015 at 18:13, Katherine Casey <fluffernutter.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I'm sure many of you recall the Netflix Prize <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize>. This is that, for

Wikipedia!

are.

You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views

the topics they were editing. Here, we'll cut straight to the privacy chase. Using just the full

history

Bitcoin,

"People

Nathan

8:21 p.m.

I'm hoping this is satire, but if it isn't, I think anyone paying others to out Wikimedians should minimally be barred from further participation in the movement.

Newyorkbrad

31 Mar 31 Mar

12:35 a.m.

I agree with the others who have opined that this should not happen. Newyorkbrad On 3/29/15, Brian <reflection(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Robert Rohde

1:43 a.m.

...

Oliver Keyes

3:15 a.m.

So, let me get this right: 1. You announced that, as David puts it, noting anonymous IPs is the same as all-the-NSA-stuff-ever; 2. People disputed it, but suggested you go form local consensus that this was problematic or participate in efforts to improve how we mask and handle data if that doesn't work for you; 3. You decided that this was hard and a satirical breaching experiment would be more enjoyable? I'm...really not sure how this could possibly seem like a constructive way to go about solving for this problem, to you. Andrew Gray's advice is good advice, and still stands. On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 6:43 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Richard Farmbrough

5:15 a.m.

Moreover this may well be a breach of policy, TOS and even law. On 31 March 2015 at 01:15, Oliver Keyes <ironholds(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

So, you are offering a prize equivalent to US $2.50? Not exactly an inspirational amount of money (though perhaps that is the point). -Robert Rohde On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Brian <reflection(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'm sure many of you recall the Netflix Prize > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize>. This is that, for

Wikipedia!

> > Although the initial goal of the Netflix Prize was to design a > collaborative filtering algorithm, it became notorious when the data was > used to de-anonymize Netflix users. Researchers proved that given just a > user's movie ratings on one site, you can plug those ratings into

another

> site, such as the IMDB. You can then take that information, and with

some

> Google searches and optionally a bit of cash (for websites that sell

user

> information, including, in some cases, their SSN) figure out who they

are.

> You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or > follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views

> the topics they were editing. > > Here, we'll cut straight to the privacy chase. Using just the full

history

> dump of the English Wikipedia, excluding edits from any logged-in users, > identify five people. You must confirm their identities with them, and > privately prove to me that you've done this. I will then nominate you as > the winner and send you one million Satoshis (the smallest unit of

Bitcoin,

> times 1 million), in addition to updating this thread. > > I suspect this challenge will be very easy for anyone who is determined. > Indeed, even if MediaWiki no longer displayed IP addresses, there would > still be enough information to identify people. Completely getting rid

> the edit history would largely solve the problem. In the mean time, this > Prize will serve as a reminder that when Wikipedia says "Your IP address > will be publicly visible if you make any edits." what they mean is,

"People

> will probably be able to figure out where you live and embarrass you." > > An extra million Satoshis for each NSA employee that you identify. A

full

bitcoin if you take a selfie with them. Let the games begin! Brian Mingus _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines

Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

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geni

6:28 a.m.

On 31 March 2015 at 03:15, Richard Farmbrough <richard(a)farmbrough.co.uk> wrote:

...

Moreover this may well be a breach of policy, TOS and even law.

Eh probably not. Go through a bunch of wikipedia bios of not very notable people. Find the edits obviously made by the subject of the article. Note IPs. I don't see any legal issues. Just rather boring thats all. -- geni

Tim Starling

9:30 a.m.

On 30/03/15 09:25, Brian wrote:

...

I suspect this challenge will be very easy for anyone who is determined. Indeed, even if MediaWiki no longer displayed IP addresses, there would still be enough information to identify people. Completely getting rid of the edit history would largely solve the problem.

So... what do you actually want? I am having trouble working out how many layers of sarcasm to strip back here to find your actual point. There are alternatives to publishing IP addresses that we have discussed before, for example automatically creating a user account with a random name and associating it with a persistent cookie. The user could set a password or just abandon the account by letting the cookie expire. CheckUser would still provide access to IP addresses. I would support such a change. I have no idea whether you would. After reading this post and your posts on wikien-l, here are my theories on what your non-sarcastic beliefs may be: 1. That we shouldn't store or use IP addresses at all, and that identification for abuse prevention should be done by some kind of unspecified cryptographic magic. 2. That disclosure and storage of IP addresses should be limited in some pragmatic way to reduce the risk of identification by cross-correlation in the manner you suggest in your $2.50 "prize". 3. That Wikimedia's suit against the NSA is hypocritical and that both Wikimedia and the NSA have legitimate needs for data collection. Feel free to narrow it down for me. -- Tim Starling

Cristian Consonni

4 Apr 4 Apr

2:02 a.m.

Hi Brian, 2015-03-30 0:25 GMT+02:00 Brian <reflection(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

somewhat tangentially, and to bring back this to topic to a more scientific setting I would like to point out that there has already been reasearch in the past on this topic. I highly recommend reading the following paper: Lieberman, Michael D., and Jimmy Lin. "You Are Where You Edit: Locating Wikipedia Contributors through Edit Histories." ICWSM. 2009. (PDF <http://www.pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/syllabi/infx598_wi12/papers/wikipedia/lieberman-lin.YouAreWhereYouEdit.ICWSM09.pdf>) For those of you that don't want to read the whole paper, you can find a recap of the most relevant findings in this presentation by Maurizio Napolitano: <http://www.slideshare.net/napo/social-geography-wikipedia-a-quick-overwiew> The main idea is associating spatial coordinates to a Wikipedia articles when possible, this articles are called "geopages". Then you extract from the history of articles the users which have edited a geopage. If you plot the geopages edited by a given contributor you can see that they tend to cluster, so you can define an "edit area". The study finds that 30-35% of contributors concentrate their edits in an edit area smaller than 1 deg^2 (~12,362 km^2, approximately the area of Connecticut or Northern Ireland[1] (thanks, Wikipedia!)). For another free/libre project with a geographic focus like OpenStreetMap this is even more marked, check out for example this tool «“Your OSM Heat Map” (aka Where did you contribute?)»[2] by Pascal Neis. This, of course, is not a straightforward de-anonimization but this methods work in principle for every contributor even if you obfuscate their IP or username (provided that you can still assign all the edits from a given user to a unique and univocal identifier) C [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_degree [2a] http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/ [2b] http://neis-one.org/2011/08/yosmhm/

Lila Tretikov

5 Apr 5 Apr

12:30 p.m.

All, As Tim mentioned we are seriously looking at privacy/identity/security/anonymity issues, specifically as it pertains to IP address exposure -- both from legal and technical standpoint. This won't happen overnight as we need to get people to work on this and there are a lot of asks, but this is on our radar. On a related note, let's skip the sarcasm and treat each other with straightforward honestly. And for non-English speakers -- who are also (if not more) in need of this -- sarcasm can be very confusing. Thanks, Lila On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Cristian Consonni <kikkocristian(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Brian, 2015-03-30 0:25 GMT+02:00 Brian <reflection(a)gmail.com>om>:

are.

You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views

the topics they were editing.

)

For those of you that don't want to read the whole paper, you can find a recap of the most relevant findings in this presentation by Maurizio Napolitano: < http://www.slideshare.net/napo/social-geography-wikipedia-a-quick-overwiew

The main idea is associating spatial coordinates to a Wikipedia articles when possible, this articles are called "geopages". Then you extract from the history of articles the users which have edited a geopage. If you plot the geopages edited by a given contributor you can see that they tend to cluster, so you can define an "edit area". The study finds that 30-35% of contributors concentrate their edits in an edit area smaller than 1 deg^2 (~12,362 km^2, approximately the area of Connecticut or Northern Ireland[1] (thanks, Wikipedia!)). For another free/libre project with a geographic focus like OpenStreetMap this is even more marked, check out for example this tool «“Your OSM Heat Map” (aka Where did you contribute?)»[2] by Pascal Neis. This, of course, is not a straightforward de-anonimization but this methods work in principle for every contributor even if you obfuscate their IP or username (provided that you can still assign all the edits from a given user to a unique and univocal identifier) C [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_degree [2a] http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/ [2b] http://neis-one.org/2011/08/yosmhm/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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participants (13)

Brian
Cristian Consonni
David Gerard
geni
Katherine Casey
Lila Tretikov
Nathan
Newyorkbrad
Oliver Keyes
Richard Farmbrough
Richard Symonds
Robert Rohde
Tim Starling