My belief is that this is not so. Checkuser logs are not the same thing as IP logs.
Are you suggesting that should a court, three months-and-a-day after a logged in user made a libelous edit, order the WMF to release the IP address of that user, they would not be able to do so? I suggest they would and probably have.
I would like to see a clear citation to where, when and how the WMF retains logs of user activity. Is there actually such an official statement somewhere? And could anyone cite it with a link?
The issue with the AOL Search Scandal is a red herring. People are not going to be searching for their own phone number or Social Security numbers within Wikipedia. And even if someone searches for such a thing, there is no way to know that they are looking for details on themselves, or on someone else.
Our entry on that regardless notes a lawsuit *four years old* with no resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal
Indicative I suggest of it being a non-story.
WJhonson:
The issue with the AOL Search Scandal is a red herring. People are not going to be searching for their own phone number or Social Security
numbers
within Wikipedia. And even if someone searches for such a thing, there is
no
way to know that they are looking for details on themselves, or on someone else.
Our entry on that regardless notes a lawsuit *four years old* with no resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal
Indicative I suggest of it being a non-story.
Many people did search for their own name occasionally, and relatively often did search for local shops and local news. Each of these clues were ambiguous and insignificant by themselves, but once put together often did paint a unique picture of one single person.
Apparently de-anonimization is a nice pursuit for some would-be detectives, and quite possibly also for government officials in some parts of the world where privacy is considered a risk to a state's stability.
The AOL data were taken offline very quickly (and the research team disbanded), but copies had already been made, and you can still find the data online now.
http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/
The following article paints a rather graphical picture of how search terms came to haunt back their author.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2006/08/08/search-history-gives-insig ht-into-lives-of-aol-users-39280576/
Erik Zachte
On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 4:27 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
My belief is that this is not so. Checkuser logs are not the same thing as IP logs.
You misbelieve. Listen to Aude. She knows what she's talking about.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org