POV: How Quickly Your IP Address Betrays You
Wikipedia logs and publishes the IP address whenever an anonymous user edits a Wikipedia article. Since the beginning of July, a few Twitter bots have popped up auto-Tweeting Wikipedia edits by “anonymous” users from a variety of known IP ranges, to include:
- UK Parliament – @ParliamentEdits
- U.S. Congress – @CongressEdits
- Irish Government – @IrishGovEdits
- Ukraine Government – @UaGovEdits (For English, @UaGovEdits_en)
- Australian Parliament – @AussieParEdits
- Pentagon – @PentagonEdits
- Goldman Sachs – @GoldmanEdits
- Collective ‘Big Oil’ – @OilEdits
What’s more, just last week, one “anonymous” user crossed a line when editing a Wikipedia article from his/her Congressional computer. As a result, Wikipedia has banned all anonymous entries from computers surfing the web from Congressional IP addresses.
Read more on this story from PBS
Just goes to show how quickly your IP address can betray you…
