[Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Risker]

On 13 June 2012 14:29, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 13 June 2012 14:09, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I believe that FT2 is saying that we should seriously consider masking
> the
> > *publicly viewable* IPv6 addresses.  The only reason that we publish the
> IP
> > addresses of any logged-out user is for attribution purposes, although
> some
> > use it for other reasons (both positive and nefarious).  Quite honestly,
> it
> > doesn't matter what information is put in place in the publicly viewable
> > logs, provided it's consistent.
> >
> > Risker
> >
> >
> Sure, that's the assertion, but it leaves unanswered a lot of "why"
> questions. Why should we make publicly viewable attributions less
> identifiable than they have been for a decade? Is that step valuable at
> all, given the reality that anyone likely to use the IP address for
> "nefarious" reasons would simply register an account?
>

I think perhaps I was not clear in what I meant by "nefarious" purposes.
The IP addresses in our contribution logs have been used by others to
locate editors, to make allegations against individuals and organizations
because their IP address showed up in those logs, and so on. It is a key
reason why "accidentally editing logged out" is one of the top reasons for
suppression requests, because it can provide a non-negligible amount of
information about the user.



>
> I think a stable, predictable privacy regime that doesn't discourage users
> is a perfectly good goal which Wikimedia has largely achieved. I'm not sure
> there is a lot of value in FT2's suggestion from a privacy perspective (it
> would make far more sense to make the mask applicable to everyone but CUs
> or admins), let alone whether a significantly more anonymous method for
> contributing is either necessary or desirable.
>
>
I would put to you that, actually, our publishing of full IP addresses of
our logged-out contributors is a very significant privacy issue. There is
no other top-10 website that publishes this information; in fact, the
number of websites that attributes contributions to specific (often
traceable) IP addresses is minuscule.  The only rationale that has ever
been given for publishing of IP addresses is for the purpose of edit
attribution.  That can be done any number of other ways.

Risker