Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts/FAQ

The basics of temporary accounts

What is a temporary account?

Any time you publish an edit on Wikipedia or other sites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation without logging into a registered account, a temporary account will be created for you. This account will automatically be given a username. A cookie will be set in your browser when the account is created. This username will be used to attribute all subsequent edits by you, even if your IP address changes. With a temporary account, your IP address can only be accessed by authorized staff and community members, as outlined in the updated Privacy policy.

How do temporary accounts work?

Temporary account names follow the pattern: ~2024-1234567 (a tilde, current year, an auto-generated number). Users cannot choose or change the names of their temporary accounts.
After 90 days of the creation date, the temporary account will automatically expire.
Subsequent edits assign a new temporary account. The old one will be deactivated and you won't be able to keep it or log into it.
It is impossible to log in to a temporary account. There are no passwords for temporary accounts.
All edits made from the same device and browser will be attributed to the same temporary account, even if the IP address you're using changes (for example, if you edit at home and at a coffee shop). This is done through the placement of a browser cookie that remembers the temporary account you have been assigned.
Temporary accounts are not like browsing history or open tabs. If you have a browser synchronized across devices, you will be assigned to different accounts on different devices. This is a consequence of how browsers work.
Temporary accounts can be deactivated at any time by ending your session or clearing your browser cookies.

Notable aspects of temporary accounts

Temporary accounts are different from registered accounts. They are short-lived and offer limited features. We don't collect any additional data for temporary accounts beyond what we collect for regular edits.
Temporary accounts do not have access to all the features available for logged-in users. Some actions, such as uploading photos to Commons, are restricted to users with a registered account.
Temporary accounts have their own user pages and user talk pages.
Temporary accounts can receive notifications and see a banner about new messages on their user talk page.
Temporary accounts can receive thanks from logged-in editors.
Temporary accounts can ping other users and they can be pinged in turn.

The basics of the project

Why are you working on temporary accounts at all?

Wikimedians began discussing the exposure of IP addresses as a privacy issue shortly after MediaWiki was developed. For example, there is a thread dating back to 2004. For many years, there was no strong incentive to change this, so the Wikimedia Foundation wasn't working on it. But in the meantime, in many countries, new laws and new standards were introduced. Finally, in 2018, the Foundation's Legal department determined that the indefinite public storage of IP addresses presents serious risks. This includes legal risks to the projects and risks to the users. Today, this project is one of the priorities of the Foundation's leadership.

See also:

Project update from July 2021 with more details about the Legal team's assessment

Why a temporary account is the right solution to the problem?

There are some hard requirements that led to the design of the temporary accounts. Some of them are of legal, and some are of technical nature:

What we are facing	What we have decided to do
One of the founding principles of our movement is that people should be able to make most simple edits without registering a permanent account.	Temporary accounts will be created automatically (people won't need to create an account themselves).
Due to legal requirements, edits on the wikis should be attributed to a user identifier other than IP address.	If temporary accounts are enabled on a wiki, an account is created for a user as soon as they commit their first edit. The user is automatically logged in to this account, which is tied to a randomly generated username. This username is displayed in every situation (except for various functionary tools) where IP addresses would have otherwise been displayed.
The identifier that a given not logged-in user's edits are attributed to needs to be stable. Creating a new user for each edit is not an option. Otherwise, there would be a too large rate of new users.	As soon as the temporary account is created, the user is logged in. The cookie has a limited lifetime. Within this duration, if the user decides to make more edits, they are all attributed to the same temporary account. A new one is created if the user decides to log out of the temporary account or otherwise use a different browser. The user retains the same temporary account if they change IP address while using the same device/browser.
The MediaWiki software can't be changed too much. We need to limit novelties to let existing features work unmodified.	A temporary account does not break anything in the way user accounts are handled. Aside from some special case behaviors that are required (such as some features that need to be disabled for temporary accounts), most code is likely to work without unexpected failures.

See also:

Technical details on Phabricator

Would disallowing or limiting anonymous editing be a good alternative?

Unlikely.

In the past, the Wikimedia Foundation has supported research into requiring registration for all editors editing Wikipedia articles. The results have been largely harmful. We've seen large drops in the net non-reverted content edits over time in Persian Wikipedia.

At this time, with the data we have, we cannot say that disabling logged-out editing on any project is a beneficial solution.

Where are temporary accounts deployed? When will these changes reach my wiki?

Temporary accounts are already available on pilot wikis: Czech Wikiversity, Igbo Wikipedia, Italian Wikiquote, Swahili Wikipedia, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia.
If the first deployments are successful and we don't have a ton of unexpected work, then in February 2025, we will roll out on larger wikis. We call this major pilot deployment. It may include some top10 wikis, but not English Wikipedia.
Next, in May 2025, we will deploy on all remaining wikis in one carefully coordinated step.

We encourage bot operators and tool developers to test their tools as early as possible.

What if a community wants to keep using IP addresses?

After temporary accounts become available, displaying IP addresses for subsequent contributions will no longer be permitted. All communities need to prepare for the change to temporary accounts.

Is the Wikimedia Foundation monitoring the effect of using temporary accounts on the communities?

Yes.

There is a public dashboard for monitoring metrics for the pilot wikis. All these statistics are updated very frequently, for instance, real-time or once every day, to give everyone a good visibility of the actual work of temporary accounts on wikis.

Specifically, the above metrics are publicly available:

Public metrics in detail

Ratio of temporary accounts that had their IP addresses revealed over total number of temporary accounts that are created. Users who actively reveal IP addresses (T375508)
Ratio of temporary accounts that had their IP addreses revealed over total number of temporary accounts that are created (375509)
Rate of abandoned edits for anonymous IP editors, regular accounts, and temporary accounts (375498)
Rate of successful edits for anonymous IP editors, regular accounts, and temporary accounts (375496)
Number of rollbacks which reverted any existing edits (375501)
Number of edits made during the given month which were reverted at any point before the snapshot (375501)
Number of unique IP addresses blocked during the given month, including blocks and reblocks, as well as blocks on single IPs and IP ranges. (375499)
Number of pages deleted during the given month (375503)
Number of pages turned on protected mode during the given month (375502)
Number of global (cross-wiki) blocks activated during the given month, including blocks and reblocks. (375869)
Number of local (wiki-specific) blocks activated during the given month, including blocks and reblocks. (375499)
Rate of CentralAuth locks (375870)
Number of temporary accounts being created (375505)
Number of rate limit trips related to temporary account creation (375500)

In addition, the Foundation is monitoring some other metrics which for security or privacy reasons are not public. These include data like the number of requests for assistance from CheckUsers. We will periodically share reports about the non-public metrics.

Non-public (guardrail) metrics in detail

Administrator actions (across all wikis)

Blocks - Number of blocks which were activated during the given month.
Blocked Unique users - Number of unique users who are blocked during the given month.
Blocked Unique IPs - Number of unique single IPs which are blocked during the given month.
Blocked Unique IP ranges - Number of unique IP ranges which are blocked during the given month.
Reverted Edits - Number of edits made during the given month which were reverted at any point before the snapshot.
Deleted Pages - Number of pages which were deleted during the given month.
Protected Pages - Number of pages which turned on protected mode during the given month.

Administrator requests

CheckUser Requests - Number of CheckUser requests per wiki during a given month.

Administrator health

Active Admins - Number of active admins during the given month. An active administrator is defined as a user who has the administrator user right and has made at least one administrative action during a given month. Administration activities include block, protect, delete, and rights. document.
Edits/Admin Ratio - The ratio of number of edits to number of active admins during a given month
New Admins - A new admin is a user who made one administrative action for the first time ever during a given month.

IP addresses appear in the history of many pages. Will those past uses be modified?

No.

Historical IP addresses that were published on wiki before the switch to temporary accounts will not be modified. The Wikimedia Foundation Legal department has approved this decision.

Legal details about temporary accounts

What specific legal requirements, regulations or risks are you worried about? Is the Foundation facing legal action? What would happen if we didn't introduce temporary accounts?

We shouldn't provide all the information. We shouldn't publish some details, and we shouldn't disclose why. If we publicly discussed what arguments we can make, or what risks are most likely to result in litigation, we could help someone harm the wikis and the communities.

This answer is based on attorney advice we are choosing to follow.

Can this change be rolled out differently by location?

No.

We protect the privacy of all users to the same standard. This will change across the Wikimedia projects.

If we tell someone their IP address will be published, isn't that enough?

No.

Many people have been confused to see their IP address published. Additionally, even when someone does see the notice, the Foundation has to properly handle their personal data. Publishing the IP addresses of non-logged-in editors falls short of current privacy best practices. Also, it creates risks, including risks to those users.

How will the project affect CC license attribution?

It will not affect it.

The 3.0 license for text on the Wikimedia projects already states that attribution should include "the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable)" (see the license at section 4c). Use of the temporary account names will function equally well as a pseudonym. IP addresses already may vary or be assigned to different people over time, so using that as a proxy for un-registered editors is not different from an the temporary account names. Both satisfy the license pseudonym requirement. In addition, our Terms of use section 7 specify that as part of contributing to Wikipedia, editors agree that links to articles (which include article history) are a sufficient method of attribution.

Technical details about temporary accounts

Where can I test it?

All beta cluster wikis except en-rtl Wikipedia
test.wikipedia.org
test2.wikipedia.org

Keep in mind that these are testing wikis. Software there may not work as expected.

In addition, users with advanced permissions may test different features on Patch Demo available on T369637.

How long does a temporary account last?

A temporary account will work for as long as the cookie exists. The cookie is currently set to expire three months after the first edit.

The following are the most common scenarios in which a temporary account will be irretrievably lost:

The user clears the cookies on the browser.
The user deletes the profile on their browser that they used when the temporary account was created.
The user used an incognito (private browsing) window, and closed the window.
The cookie expired.

If a temporary account is lost, then a new temporary account, with a new username, will be automatically generated the next time the user publishes an edit. If a user would like a permanent account, they can create a free registered account at any time.

Are the temporary usernames unique across different wikis?

Yes.

If you see User:~2024-1234567 at multiple SUL-connected wikis, you can be confident that this is the same account.

What if temporary accounts are only enabled on some wikis?

Some wikis have temporary accounts enabled (pilots) and others do not.

Wikis that have temporary accounts enabled display unregistered editors as temporary accounts. On non-temp-accounts wikis they still show up as IP addresses. When the temporary user switches between these wikis they will show up as a temporary account in one wiki and as an IP address in another.

This may create a problem with some features that rely on having a persistent user identity across wikis. If your feature(s) are impacted by this change, please come talk to us on the talk page or through Phabricator.

Access to IP addresses

Who is able to see the IP address of temporary accounts?

Stewards, CheckUsers, global sysops, admins, and other community members who meet qualifying thresholds, as well as certain staff at the Wikimedia Foundation.

There are privacy risks associated with IP addresses. This is why they will be visible only to people who need to have that information for effective investigation or prevention of different policy violations.

See also:

Access to temporary account IP addresses legal policy

I have a qualified account. How can I see the IP addresses?

Go to Special:Preferences and opt in.

Will I need to sign any non-disclosure agreement?

No.

There is the access to nonpublic personal data policy (ANPDP). It is a legal policy from the Wikimedia Foundation about how checkusers and people with certain other roles must protect non-public personal data that they obtain in the course of their duties. Volunteer admins and patrollers do not need to sign it. However, you will need to opt-in to access to IP addresses through Special:Preferences at your local wiki.

How will editors apply for this new user right?

By default, this will be automatically assigned to eligible users. The only thing you will need to do is to opt-in when it becomes available at your wiki.

My community wants to set higher requirements. How do we do that?

Currently, the policy does not allow having different requirements on different wikis.

When will the user right become available? When can we start assigning it?

The user right has already been added to the MediaWiki software. It is not useful at all wikis, though. Communities that want to use a process requiring individual review can start pre-approving editors at any time.

The minimum requirements for non-admins are too high

This may occasionally be true, such as when a wiki is newly created. In such cases, someone at that wiki needs to request an exception from the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department. Contact privacywikimedia.org with an explanation of the situation in your community.

I'm an admin, but I don't want this user right

You won't be able to see any of this information unless you click to accept the agreement.

I believe that someone is misusing this information

Please report privacy-related concerns to the ombuds commission. To ensure accountability, logs are kept of tool usage and of which users have access to the tool.

Other concerns about potential misuse may be brought to a steward by placing a request on m:Steward requests/Permissions#Removal of access. Stewards are authorized to block a user’s access to IP addresses if they determine that misuse occurred. This will prevent access even if the user would be automatically eligible or has been granted access through a community process.

Some communities currently have public pages for documenting the activities of some bad actors, including their IP addresses (e.g., Long-term abuse). Will this documentation still be permitted?

Yes.

The communities should treat the IPs of logged in users and temporary account holders the same on the Long-term abuse list. They may list the IP addresses when necessary, but they should refer to the abusers by their temporary account usernames.

See also:

Access to temporary account IP addresses

Can we publicly document the IP addresses used by suspected (but not confirmed) bad actors who are using temporary accounts?

In general, no, but sometimes yes, temporarily.

When possible, patrollers with access to IP addresses should document the temporary account name(s) instead of the IP addresses. The exception is when the IP addresses are necessary for the purpose of protecting the wiki from abusive actions. Necessity should be determined on a case-by-case basis. If a disclosure later becomes unnecessary, then the IP address should be promptly removed.

For example, if a suspected vandal is exonerated during an investigation, then the report showing the user's IP address can be removed through oversight. That way, the IP address is only revealed while it is needed, and then is suppressed later, after it has been shown to not be needed any longer. See the related policy for more information.

If other information about non-logged-in contributors is revealed (such as location, or ISP), then it doesn't matter if the IP address is also published, right?

No. The IP address should not be published.

With temporary accounts, the public information will be not linked to an individual person or device. For example, it will be a city-level location, or a note that an edit was made by someone at a particular university. While this is still information about the user, it's less specific and individual than an IP address. So even though we are making some information available in order to assist with abuse prevention, we are protecting the privacy of that specific contributor better.

Experienced contributor questions

Where can I test how my advanced permissions work with temporary accounts?

Users with advanced permissions may test different features on Patch Demo available on T369637.

What if a temporary account holder needs to be blocked?

Temporary accounts' IPs will be stored for a period of 90 days. Their IP addresses can still be blocked, just like at present. Temporary accounts can also be independently blocked, including global blocks and autoblocks.

Can't an abuser just clear cookies?

Yes, they can. Temporary accounts are not intended to solve any anti-abuse problems.

We know the problem of abusers making edits through a pool of changing IPs while masking browser agent data. This cannot be solved through temporary accounts. This is not a design goal for this project either. Otherwise, we would need to use trusted tokens, disabling anonymous edits, or fingerprinting, all of which are very involved, complicated measures that have significant community and technical considerations.

Tools will be adapted to ensure that bidirectional mappings between temporary accounts within the last 90 days and IPs can be safely and efficiently navigated by trusted functionaries. However, abuse from a user that clears cookies may become difficult or impossible to detect and mitigate for users without elevated user rights, or if some of the edits involved are more than 90 days old.

Will temporary accounts be covered by the autoblock mechanism?

Autoblocks stop vandals and other high-risk users from continuing to disrupt the projects by immediately creating a new account. Autoblocks for temporary accounts are the same as autoblocks for registered users. (IP addresses are not available to the public.)

More information is available in phab:T332231. Temporary accounts can also be blocked via global autoblocks.

Is there a limitation for creating many temporary accounts from the same IP address?

Yes.

There is a limitation preventing from creating too many accounts from the same IP address too quickly. The current threshold for regular accounts is six per IP address per day ($wgAccountCreationThrottle).

In addition to that, there is a similar limitation for temporary accounts, which is also six per IP address per day ($wgRateLimits). This threshold can be changed quickly if necessary.

We have investigated the ideal thresholds of the limit (T357771). We will check nuanced responses to tripping thresholds, including CAPTCHAs, temporary blocks, calls to create an account, etc.

During the entire rollout, we will analyze rate limit trips (T357763). To learn more, see T357776.

What are the functional differences between using a Special:Checkuser on a temporary account, and revealing the IP address?

The IP reveal feature can show you the IP address used for a particular edit by a particular temporary account, the last IP address used by a temporary account, all the IP addresses used by a temporary account, or all the temporary accounts edits on a given IP address or IP address range.

Why are there so many temporary accounts with zero edits?

This is because of AbuseFilter at work.

Temporary accounts are not created at the moment of a successful edit save, but at the moment of any save attempt. AbuseFilter prevents some edits from being saved. These attempts need to be logged, and in the log, each attempt needs to be assigned to a performer. This is why an account needs to be created.