IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation
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Temporary Accounts
A new type of user account changing how personal data of logged-out users is handled
← IP Info |
Temporary accounts for unregistered editors will be a new type of user account. IP addresses of unregistered editors will no longer be publicly visible. Only those who fight spam, vandalism, harassment and disinformation will have access to IP addresses.
Currently, anyone can edit Wikimedia wikis without a Wikimedia account or without logging in. MediaWiki, the software behind Wikimedia projects, records and exposes your IP address in its public log if you edit without logging in. Anyone seeking your IP address will find it.
Wikimedia projects have a good reason for storing and publishing IP addresses: they play a critical role in keeping vandalism and harassment off our wikis.
However, your IP address can tell where you are editing from and can be used to identify you or your device. This is of particular concern if you are editing from a territory where our wikis are deemed controversial. Publishing your IP address may allow others to locate you.
With changes to privacy laws and standards (e.g., the General Data Protection Regulation and the global conversation about privacy that it started), the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team has decided to protect user privacy by hiding IPs from the general public. However, we will continue to give access to users who need to see them in order to protect the wikis.
We're aware that this change will impact current anti-abuse workflows. We are committed to developing tools or maintaining access to tools that can identify and block vandals, sock puppets, editors with conflicts of interest and other bad actors after IPs are masked.
For everyone
For patrollers and functionaries
For developers
News and updates
Statement from the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department
Hello! We have published a new policy page: Access to temporary account IP addresses. It explains how users can gain access to IP addresses. Later, we will update the section on using IP addresses. In it, we will add information on how and where to access the IP addresses, and what is logged when IP addresses are accessed. There is also a new page with frequently asked questions. Both pages use the term "temporary user accounts". This name comes from the first version of the software (MVP). Soon, we will share more information about it. We welcome your comments on the talk page.
Updates
: Deployments on the first pilots
Deployment schedule
We have a finalized list of small-to-medium sized projects where we will be deploying temporary accounts over the next couple of weeks. The goal is to ensure all critical functionality (patroller workflows, tools etc.) for temporary accounts works as expected. We decided to split this phase into two batches. This way, we will have more control over the key functionality and more confidence before temporary accounts are introduced on the largest of the first pilots.
- On October 29, we deployed Temporary Accounts to:
- On November 5 we deployed to:
Progress on key features
- We are developing a public dashboard for monitoring metrics for our pilot projects. We will have a documentation page in place shortly to explain which metrics we are focusing on and why.
- Special:GlobalContributions is now ready for looking up cross-wiki contributions from an IP address. This page will only be accessible to users who qualify to see IP addresses associated with a temporary account. We are still ironing out permissions for this page access. We will have a documentation page up about it over the next week.
- We have updated IP Info to support information for multiple IP addresses that may be associated with a temporary account. Special:IPInfo should be available on all projects where temporary accounts will be deployed.
- We have completed building the required workflows for gaining access to IP Reveal as outlined in the Wikimedia Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy.
- We are updating IP Info access policy to be at par with the IP Reveal policy. You can follow along with this task for further information.
- Temporary accounts can now be globally blocked. Global autoblocks work is in progress and should be implemented over the next couple of weeks.
- Temporary accounts are now available on all beta cluster projects except for en-rtl for testing.
We are looking forward to your comments on the talk page.
: Deployment plan is ready!
We are happy to announce our timeline and strategy for the temporary accounts deployments across all wikis. The plan was co-created by the Product and Technology, Legal, and Communications departments at the Foundation. We also consulted stewards and informed CheckUsers. All the date below are subject to change based on the extent of pending work. We will be informing you if anything changes.
- In late October 2024, we will roll out on approximately 10 small and medium-sized wikis. This phase is called the minor pilot deployment. We have pre-selected potential good pilots based on different factors. These include: the numbers of active admins and IP edits per month, lack of blockers related to the configuration of a given wiki, availability of potential ambassadors and technical members of the respective communities, and more. After we deploy there, we will be monitoring the impact of this project on collaboration on wikis. We will also be contacting community members of these wikis. Some time later, we will monitor what will happen when the initial IP addresses of temporary accounts are not available to patrollers.
- 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. After that, we will be providing support, monitoring metrics, and solving issues as they arise.
- We will do our best to inform everyone impacted ahead of time. Information about temporary accounts will be available on Tech News, Diff, other blogs, different wikipages, banners, and other forms. At conferences, for example regional and national ones, we or our colleagues on our behalf will be inviting talk about this project with attendees. We will also try to have presentations there. In addition, we will be contacting affiliates running programs of support for editors with advanced permissions. Subscribe to our new newsletter to stay close in touch.
