Policy talk:Privacy policy

The IP addresses of logged-in users may occasionally be reviewed from the server logs while investigating cases of vandalism.

Who will investigate these logs ? Maintenance people only, or any sysop who ask for them ?

�

So far, mainly me or Jimbo, though excerpts may sometimes get posted publicly. --Brion VIBBER 13:36 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

what defines when excerpts are posted publicly ? Who can ask for them and why ?

---

Would it be possible to make a link to the Draft privacy policy page on the page where you can log in of make a new user account. It took me a very long time to find any mention of any privacy information, and I found the draft privacy policy very usefull.

Thank you

Hey, someone else who finds privacy policies useful! This draft is looking pretty good to me so far. I don't know how the process works, but I imagine a link to a more polished version of this document will be appearing on all Wikipedia pages soon (?).

---

Does the term "aggregate statistics" refer to statistics in which all or most personally identifiable information has been stripped? Can someone define this term or elaborate on it?

---

What user information falls under the GFDL? If I get a SQL database dump, are there email addresses, IP addresses, etc. in the dump? -- EvanProdromou

Lookups

I've noticed that MeatballWiki gives no IPs for anon users, but (what I presume to be) reverse DNS lookups. Has this been proposed/discussed/rejected here? Martin

The old usemod wikipedias also show the hostname. I would be nice to have option to select between IP adres and hostname. Giskart 18:39 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Except in rare cases (dynamic IPs), IPs and hostnames are equivalent, but hostnames are sometimes considered more privacy-invasive, as they often explicitly specify a person's university, workplace, or local ISP by name in text for all to see, which information would require a separate lookup with an IP. That, and we'd have to do reverse lookups on every visitor in order to obtain the information -- that'll slow things down a little. --Brion

This would be useful information, though, in helping to judge such a user's contribution. For example, if the BBCi article was modified by someone with a bbc.co.uk hostname, one might expect it to be accurate, but potentially biased. If the Java programming language was modified by someone with a university hostname, one might expect a certain, more theoretical, slant. If someone with an French-based hostname posted to US plan to invade Iraq, one might want to check for an anti-US slant - and also copyedit the spelling+grammar of someone who may not be a fluent English speaker. Martin

A few points:

• Shouldn't IP adresses of viewers be deleted periodically, say once a month? That way it wouldn't matter if any authorities asked for them because they would not be available.
  • They already are.
• Would it be possible to associate tempID's to IP addresses for edits when users are not logged in. This way the public and/or authorities could not exact revenge/hunt down/other evil things the editors, yet at the same time such IP's could be banned by administrators if need be. These matchings would also need to be flushed periodically.
  • If you don't wish to be identified by other visitors, log in and use a pseudonym instead of your real name or your real network address, and screen your language, writing style, and the domain of things you write about very carefully to avoid tipping people off. If you're writing things that are likely to get people to "exact revenge" upon you, you're either not following NPOV or you're in an unhealthy environment which is a bigger problem for you than anything Wikipedia does. --Brion VIBBER 23:39, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
• Shouldn't the IP's of editors that are logged in be deleted periodically? If you have the login name, you may not need the IP address. I could see where this would come in handy for long-term troublemakers, but we must weigh privacy issues more.
  • They aren't stored other than in the webserver log which is already cleared periodically, see above.

Most people might see this as having to do with the US government and terrorism, but that, while still a valid concern, may not be the worst case scenario. Say someone edits an article having to do with a dictator, mafia member, government official in a way that angers the latter entity. Since the IP's are public, the editor could be tracked down rather easily.

just a few things to consider, Dori 23:08, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)