On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Jan Zerebecki jan.wikimedia@zerebecki.dewrote:
What would be involved for someone to misuse _without_ Tor?:
- Find a free WiFi spot you haven't used before.
- Create account (no need to enter any Email).
- Abuse and repeat if you get banned.
I tried 1 and 2, obviously not doing 3. It worked on my first try. I wouldn't have thought it would be that easy.
Your scenario is based on the premise that Wikipedia vandals care enough about vandalizing Wikipedia that they would get in their car (assuming they're old enough to have a license), drive to the nearest Starbucks, vandalize Wikipedia, and then drive somewhere else when they are blocked.
Most vandals don't put that much effort into it. I would argue that abusing free WiFi hotspots is actually harder than abusing Tor, because it involves physically moving from location to location, as opposed to pressing a button and resetting my identity. Keep in mind we are not trying to permanently block vandals, because that's impossible. We're just trying to make vandalism difficult enough so it is no longer worthwhile.
*-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science