Hi there.
What is http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ and how is it used in the wikipedia articles? I haven't seen this subdomain loading until recently.
Thanks, Strainu
On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
Hi there.
What is http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ and how is it used in the wikipedia articles? I haven't seen this subdomain loading until recently.
It's a IP-to-location lookup service[0]. The only thing I know it's being used on is for targeting the country-specific donation information.
-Chad
2010/11/3 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
Hi there.
What is http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ and how is it used in the wikipedia articles? I haven't seen this subdomain loading until recently.
It's a IP-to-location lookup service[0]. The only thing I know it's being used on is for targeting the country-specific donation information.
-Chad
Thanks Chad. I'm interested in some more informations about that, especially how does this relates to the Privacy policy.
Is the information stored anywhere? Is there any way to opt-out of this? Is there another service used for this project (I'm thinking Google Latitude, but there are others)?
Thanks, Strainu
Thanks Chad. I'm interested in some more informations about that, especially how does this relates to the Privacy policy.
Is the information stored anywhere? Is there any way to opt-out of this? Is there another service used for this project (I'm thinking Google Latitude, but there are others)?
From a privacy POV, it doesn't really affect anything. It isn't
currently being stored anywhere, and is information that could accessed by other means. Every site you visit, including Wikimedia sites, could determine this info without doing it via this method, it's just easier for us to pull this way.
This isn't being used by any third-party tools, and is only currently being used for donation banner information as far as I know. It is being used to show more relevant banners to your area. There isn't any way to explicitly opt-out, but you could block the domain, or block the javascript that is being used. That said, there isn't anything to gain by blocking this.
Respectfully,
Ryan Lane
2010/11/3 Strainu strainu10@gmail.com:
Thanks Chad. I'm interested in some more informations about that, especially how does this relates to the Privacy policy.
Is the information stored anywhere?
All geoip does is look at your IP address and do a database lookup to translate it to your rough location. In the US this is usually fairly accurate (closest major city in most cases I've seen), in other parts of the world not so much, which is why the fundraising folks are only useing it for per-country targeting, because we're pretty sure geoip produces the correct country code for a given IP. To see what geoip makes of your location, simply visit http://geoip.wikimedia.org .
Becasue geoip determines your probable location based only on your IP address, there are no additional privacy implications. Anyone who knows your IP address can run it through a geoip database (I don't think geoip.wm.o allows querying arbitrary IPs, but there's plenty of other such services out there) and find out the rough location it corresponds to. That means any questions regarding privacy of location fall back to privacy of IP, and that's something we already have a well-established policy for.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)
Roan Kattouw wrote:
To see what geoip makes of your location, simply visit http://geoip.wikimedia.org .
You mean http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/
MZMcBride
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org