Анонимное редактирование: Повышение конфиденциальности и уменьшение злоупотреблений/Информация об IP-адресах
Our purpose is to make it easier for admins, anti-vandal fighters and power users to access information about IP addresses.
A lot of on-wiki anti-vandalism workflows heavily rely on information revealed by IP addresses. This information may affect the way an editor interacts with an unregistered user. At the moment, retrieving and understanding this information is not an easy task.
This project is a step towards improving on-wiki support for the anti-vandalism task forces. We hope it will be very useful as we move forward on the Temporary accounts project.
Обновления статуса
24 мая 2022
В этот день инструмент Информации об IP стал доступен на всех вики как бета-функция
After our initial run on testwiki we received a good amount of feedback. I will summarize the key pieces of feedback below:
- The biggest and most important feedback was about the data quality of MaxMind. MaxMind's data quality, especially about proxy data, is not great. We have reached out to Maxmind about this and are also actively talking to Spur to get their data feed. Once we are able to obtain Spur's data feed we will be able to integrate it into the feature and show information from multiple data sources.
- We heard about the interface being unclear about what information is available and what isn't. We are working on improving the labels and providing better guidance about the information displayed.
- We heard a request about expanding the tool to include global information and also include information about IPs that have not made any edits on the given wiki. We will be looking more into both of these requests. We have done some prior investigation into showing global information.
We would love to hear more feedback about the feature. Please feel free to leave feedback as you use the feature. Your feedback will help improve the tool.
1 апреля 2022
The IP Info feature has now been deployed to testwiki as a Beta Feature. The plan is to run initial testing on testwiki until mid-April after which, if we don’t discover any major issues, the feature will be available on all projects. It will continue to be in the Beta Feature phase.
Basic versus Advanced information
There are two levels of access to IP information. Users with Autoconfirmed will be able to access the Basic information. Users with advanced privileges (admin, sysop, bureaucrat, checkuser) will be able to access the Advanced information. Advanced information includes City, State, ISP, Organization + Basic. Everything else displayed in the above screenshot will be available in Basic.
If you want to try the advanced information mode on testwiki, please request for temporary admin privileges on the discussion page.
Доступ
In order to activate IP Info the user will need to agree to a disclaimer stating that this information is being accessed for anti-vandalism purposes only. Once activated, the user will be able to access both the IP Info popup (on log, history and recent changes pages) and the IP Info infobox (on contributions page). There will be a log to keep track of how IP information is being accessed. This is purely for Legal purposes. Only WMF Trust & Safety staff will have access to this log for the time being.
Popup & Infobox
There are two places to access this information: the popup and the infobox. The popup is intended to be a quick way to access specific IP details which can help while patrolling on the recent changes, log or history pages. The full infobox will be available on Special:Contributions. Clicking on the popup will lead to the infobox.
Обратная связь
When the tool is available on all projects there will be a link to provide feedback directly through the feature itself. This will allow for structured feedback to be collected in multiple languages. In the meantime, please reach out to us on the talk page and provide feedback.
We want to hear from you about:
- What did you like about this tool?
- What did you find confusing or missing?
- How else can we improve this feature?
Будущее
There are a couple of potential future feature improvements that we have in mind:
- Identifying and incorporating new streams of information into the feature. This can include sources like Spur that we have discussed in the past. This will also help us get better coverage for IPs in different parts of the world.
- Bringing this information into CheckUser. Checkusers will benefit from having this key information at their fingertips.
We don’t have a firm timeline for when we will be working on these. We want to ensure the tool is useful in its current state before adding new features. Our top priority is to build a feature that patrollers across different projects use and find helpful.
23 сентября 2021
The Anti-Harassment Tools team has recently wrapped up its work on delivering key changes to SecurePoll and assisting with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections 2021. We are back to working on IP Info and hopefully this page will see many more updates in the near future. Since we were gone, here's the big updates on this project:
- We received MaxMind access. It took longer than anticipated but we finally have access to all the key data we needed.
- We are currently working on delivering on the mocks we referred to in our last update. One key addition to the data has been the inclusion of a data point indicating whether the IP address is v4 or v6.
25 марта 2021
IP Info product development is well underway. We wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about where we are at and get your feedback on the direction.
User interviews & task model
We conducted user interviews to understand how editors currently patrol IPs. This gave us a rough understanding of the IP patrolling process, information required and tools used. Based on this research we came up with a model of how the task of IP patrolling is usually conducted. After a few rounds of feedback from design, engineers, research and T&S folks here is what we came up with:
As we understand it now, the IP patrolling process usually starts from RecentChanges, an editor’s Watchlist or from a page that the editor knows gets vandalized often. When looking at the edits of such a page the patroller first looks for clear red flags like edit flooding, lack of edit summary, large deletions etc. They then look for more specific on-wiki information like if the IP has a talk page, if it has ever been blocked in the past, its global and local contributions, and in the case of English Wikipedia, if there is a mention of the IP on the LTA page.
Based on this initial research they decide if an IP is worth looking into further. If it is, they use external tools to find more information about the IP, like: location, proxy usage and organization that the IP might be linked to. This process is not completely accurate since different databases have different information on the same IP. Oftentimes, based on the location of the IP and the location of the IP tool, the information given might be very different.
Finally, based on the information collected they decide which action would be most appropriate. Again, this decision takes into account various factors like the policies of that wiki, the scale of the collateral damage caused by a range block, consistency in editing patterns etc.
Mock-ups
Based on feedback from the first round of user interviews, we have settled on the following product approach.
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Popup shown on IP addresses, showing on-wiki information about the IP.
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Accordion box on top of Special:Contributions that shows both IP and on-wiki information.
| Информация об IP | Минимальная необходимая группа пользователей |
|---|---|
| Местонахождение | Администратор / чекъюзер |
| Интернет-провайдер / домен | Администратор / чекъюзер |
| ASN | Администратор / чекъюзер |
| Организация | Администратор / чекъюзер |
| Тип соединения | Автоподтверждённый |
| User type | Автоподтверждённый |
| Информация о прокси | Автоподтверждённый |
| Статический / Динамический | Автоподтверждённый |
| Количество пользователей на IP | Автоподтверждённый |
Since the patrollers need on-wiki information about the IP before they decide to investigate it we are going to add a popup that shows block and contribution information. The popup would be accessible by clicking an information icon next to the IP address on pages like RecentChanges, Watchlist and History.
If the patroller decides to dig deeper into an IP address by going to their Contributions page, they'll be able to see a collapsible box that shows more IP related information.
Access to information and risk to anonymous editors
By making the IP information so readily available we hope to remove some of the barriers that our non-technical patrollers might be facing in reliably getting this information. At the same time, we hope this streamlines the process for users who are currently relying on external tools. We also recognize that easy access to this information might be putting our anonymous editors at risk, especially because some of the IP information, like location and organization, can easily help in identifying a person.
We need to balance the concerns of ease of use and risk to anonymous editors. To do this we plotted the different pieces of IP information on a graph with Risk on the Y axis and Usefulness to patrolling on the X axis:
This exercise wasn't completely scientific and was based on the learnings from research and estimates of the team (please see the questions below if you'd like to contribute). Two possible clusters appeared, the high risk one mostly containing information that could reveal an editor’s location.
We are planning to show all on-wiki information to all editors that are auto-confirmed and above. Auto-confirmed and above editors will also have access to IP information that doesn't reveal possibly personal information about anonymous editors. This would include things like proxy and static/dynamic-ness of the IP. Finally, Admins and Checkusers will have access to more IP information like location, organization and domain.
Вопросы
- Is there any other information you look at before deciding to investigate an IP?
- When investigating an IP what kinds of information do you look for? Which page are you likely on when looking for this information?
- What kinds of IP information do you find most useful?
- What kinds of IP information when shared, do you think could put our anonymous editors at risk?
17 ноября 2020
The project is currently under backend development as we are looking into sources to pull IP Information from and what kind of information we should display and to whom. We have a mockup ready for your feedback. Would love to hear your feedback on the talk page.
10 мая 2020
- We have done an initial technical investigation into this project. Follow along on phab:T248525.
- We are currently looking into the various services that provide information about IP addresses. Follow along on phab:T251933.
Background
How is IP address information useful to our communities?
Анти-вандализм
See also: Research:Patrolling on Wikipedia/Report
Single-address blocks bar a single IP address from editing the site, or specific pages in the case of partial blocks, for a specified duration. MediaWiki also allows administrators to block IP ranges, which is helpful for dynamic IPs or covering a small range frequently used for vandalism. Administrators are expected to check the coverage of ranges they intend to block in order to assess collateral damage.
Certain types of range or single-IP block are handled differently or tagged with templates depending on the type of address they are. For example, if an IP address engaging in vandalism is registered to an educational institution, administrators take special note and apply templates such as Template:School block and Template:Shared IP edu. This is especially important given that educators may assign editing work on Wikipedia as part of the curriculum, and if the institution was previously blocked, the templates provide instructions for contacting the administrators to get around it. Other such templates include Template:Shared IP address (public), for IP addresses determined to be public. This is not necessarily used for blocks and can be used pre-emptively, to clear up potential confusion at receiving messages not meant for the user or to point to features only available to registered users. These templates are not unique to English Wikipedia, and equivalents can be found on many different projects.
The IP blocking workflow of administrators currently relies on some IP information, usually the registered organization, geographic location, and ASN. This information generally comes from third-party IP information providers, with no standard service and therefore, different degrees of accuracy and reliability. For example, an edit from an IP address registered to a residential ISP should be handled differently to an edit from an IP registered to a government organization.
IP addresses are also used in AbuseFilter in conjunction with other settings and targets to make very specific blocks, so as to minimize disrupting the experience of regular users.
IP information is also used in CheckUser, especially when dealing with cases of alternate account abuse (also known as sockpuppeting). Access to this tool is severely limited since it allows access to potentially-identifying information tied to accounts, which usually do not have their IP addresses exposed.
Anonymity and anonymous editing
There have not been major or definite studies of the effects of unregistered editing on our projects, though there have been previous attempts. Generally speaking, community research has focused on links between anonymity and vandalism. We do know that fairly large portions of constructive edits are made from unregistered users. A 2013 study on anonymous editor volume and impact noted that about 100,000 anonymous editors made roughly a third of the edits counted in that month. This finding was reinforced by a 2016 study on edit productivity, which showed that unregistered users (there called anonymous editors) "contribute substantially to overall productivity". Anecdotally, other administrators on different projects have also noted that unregistered users can make a substantial and constructive portion of the editor-base.
Practically speaking, while no project has disallowed all unregistered user edits as a matter of course, unregistered users are generally restricted in what types of contributions they can make as compared to registered users. For example, unregistered users cannot start new articles or upload files on most of our projects. Furthermore, unregistered users’ lack of a stable social identity makes it difficult for them to communicate and fully participate in their project’s community in several ways. In other words, because there is no way to guarantee that the person behind a given IP address will be the same every time, communication with unregistered users comes with in-built obstacles.
Research
Research on Wikipedia sometimes uses IP addresses, as exposed on edit summaries, to gain aggregated information about the editing practices of users in a given geographic area. Researchers generally only use aggregate information from IPs.
Проблема
Currently when our editors want to learn about an IP address information, they sometimes need to refer to external, proprietary websites to gain this information. Often they need to consult more than one website to cross-check the data or to get all the different pieces of information they need in order to do their work. This means often an editor would spend a great deal of time and energy looking up the data they want to see. We heard about these issues in great depth when we asked users about their workflows on the project talk page.
Предлагаемое решение
The core idea is to incorporate this data into the Wikimedia wikis in a way that we can provide all the information an editor needs in-house without them needing to go to external websites to get the information. This would include surfacing information like:
- High-level location information about an IP address
- Owner of the IP address
- Whether the IP address is known to be behind a proxy or Tor node
- Whether the IP address is considered malicious by other websites
Mockup
Here's a tentative mockup for the feature. We are currently planning to place the information box containing IP address information on the Contributions page of the IP address. We are also planning to break down the information that's visible to the users based on their permissions. All autoconfirmed users and above would be able to access this. This would mean more sensitive information would be accessible to users with advanced permissions like Admins, Checkusers etc.
As you look at this mockup, I'd invite you to think about the following:
- When do you seek more information about IP addresses?
- What information is important for you to know?
- Where do you need to see this information?
- How do you use this information? What actions do you take based on this information?
Please leave your thoughts on the talk page. It will be very valuable as we plan our work.
Преимущества и риски
Преимущества
- Easier patrolling: This would eliminate the need for users to copy-paste IP addresses to external tools and to extract the information they need, leading to lesser manual work.
- Faster patrolling: It will save editors’ time by giving them the information they need readily in the interface.
- Higher reliability: The WMF can contract with websites that offer highly reliable datasets which are regularly updated with translations as well. Since this project will be Foundation-maintained, it will probably be much more reliable than some websites our users are dependent on currently.
- Lower technical barriers: It would make it easier for new admins and checkusers to join without needing to have a very good understanding of how to extract information from IP addresses. This would potentially lead to more minority users in power-roles over the long term.
Риски
- Privacy risk: Not everyone on the internet is aware of what an IP address string reveals. This means often unregistered users make edits without knowing they are leaving a fingerprint that can be used to track them. Similarly, a lot of editors do not know this either. This leads to unintentional privacy for unregistered users (Security through obscurity). Depending on who gets to see the information exposed by this feature, there is a real risk of more users seeing the data than before.