Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal under the new privacy policy, really goes agains the wishes of the community as they do not wish to be finger printed.

identifying that multiple accounts are owned by the same person. agent. Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal under the new privacy policy, really goes agains the wishes of the community as they do not wish to be finger printed. See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:EventLogging/UserAgentSanitization or https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy There has been plenty more discussions about this on analytics e-mail list. using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. However, note that the UA " WikipediaApp/<version> <OS>/<form-factor>/<version>" clearly satisfies the use case of the mobile team. It provides as much information as they need from their user without sending any private data. Can you please list what is your use case? Namely how are you identifying "false" accounts. Perhaps relying on the user agent to do so is not the best strategy going forward. Have in mind that with the old privacy policy UA data needed to be discarded after 90 days. With the new policy there is more legal room but given community feedback analytics team is planning on aggregating all UA information in the future. This means that UA data will not be stored (or reported) per user or request but rather agreggated (as in "4% of users use iPhone"). We gathered recently information from all teams as to use cases pertaining UA data collection: https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Internal/EventLogging/PrivateDa… . Let's talk about your use case and add it to the document that already exists describing usages of user agent data, this document was sent out to all teams couple months ago but there is no description of your use case there: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/document/d/1bp6qrvYi0Mh7l0s1psGnXEE… On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Dan Garry &lt;dgarry(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

Rather than having an ethical debate over it, we could always test the

+1. I'm totally down for keeping less information around, but if it gets in the way of people doing their job? Rather than having an ethical debate over it, we could always test the actual usefulness with Science. That way we'd be able to see how much granularity each additional component adds to the data. On 27 March 2014 07:15, Aaron Halfaker &lt;ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

I don't think that "the wishes of the community" have been established and

Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal under I don't think that "the wishes of the community" have been established and the whole point of checkuser is that it allows for fingerprinting. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 4:20 AM, Nuria Ruiz &lt;nuria(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

Garry, Replying again to clarify matters a bit. using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. There are two types of data we are considering when it comes to data gathering and storage: operational and application data. Operational data is retained for a 90 day period, it is logged per request and not manipulated in any way. The second type of data is application data, data that comes from logging an application event (like event logging) or tracks the usage of a feature. This data will be aggregated to avoid privacy concerns. The google doc that describes user agent data collection does so for application data, i.e. data we wish to retain long term. https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Internal/EventLogging/PrivateDa… . I think perhaps the confusion here comes from not defining who are the consumers of the user agent format mobile is proposing. using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. By whom? how? via checkuser extension or other system?. It is worth having in mind that a mobile application is not a website (i.e. requests do not come from a browser, they come from an http client) and thus you might not be able to detect false accounts in the same fashion. For example, it is not strange that all users of a telco appear to come from a small set of IP addresses. In that case the IP bit of a request is not very significant when it comes to uniquely identify a user. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Nuria Ruiz &lt;nuria(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: > > >As a checkuser, user agents are an important part of my workflow for > identifying that multiple accounts are owned by the same person. > > So I'm going to have to argue for including more information in the > user agent. > > Including more information on the UA, while being covered by legal > under the new privacy policy, really goes agains the wishes of the > community as they do not wish to be finger printed. > See: > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:EventLogging/UserAgentSanitizationor > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy > There has been plenty more discussions about this on analytics e-mail > list. > > >> using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would >> lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. > > However, note that the UA " WikipediaApp/<version> > <OS>/<form-factor>/<version>" clearly satisfies the use case of the mobile > team. It provides as much information as they need from their user without > sending any private data. > > Can you please list what is your use case? Namely how are you identifying > "false" accounts. Perhaps relying on the user agent to do so is not the > best strategy going forward. Have in mind that with the old privacy policy > UA data needed to be discarded after 90 days. With the new policy there is > more legal room but given community feedback analytics team is planning > on aggregating all UA information in the future. This means that UA data > will not be stored (or reported) per user or request but rather agreggated > (as in "4% of users use iPhone"). > > We gathered recently information from all teams as to use cases > pertaining UA data collection: > > https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Internal/EventLogging/PrivateDa… > . > > Let's talk about your use case and add it to the document that already > exists describing usages of user agent data, this document was sent out to > all teams couple months ago but there is no description of your use case > there: > > https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/document/d/1bp6qrvYi0Mh7l0s1psGnXEE… > > > > > > > On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Dan Garry &lt;dgarry(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: > >> Hey Yuvi, >> >> As a checkuser, user agents are an important part of my workflow for >> identifying that multiple accounts are owned by the same person. So I'm >> going to have to argue for including more information in the user agent. >> Your proposed user agent would basically mean that every single person >> using the most up-to-date version of the app on a particular platform would >> be indistinguishable from each other. This would, unfortunately, lead to >> lots of innocent users getting blocked as sockpuppets. >> >> Here's an example of a user agent from an iPhone using Safari: >> Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; zh-tw) >> AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 >> Safari/6533.18.5 >> >> Look at all of that wonderful information! ;-) In general, the more >> information you can include without breaching the user's privacy, the >> better. >> >> I'd be happy to work with you on this. >> >> Thanks, >> Dan >> >> P.S. You may also want to consult with the legal team, to ensure that an >> unacceptable levels of private information are not given out. They would >> also make a complement for me; I would likely be pulling in the direction >> of "MOAR INFORMATION!", whereas they would likely be pulling in the >> direction of "LESS INFORMATION!". :-) >> >> >> On 26 March 2014 15:00, Yuvi Panda &lt;yuvipanda(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: >> >>> Add Analytics to cc, as I think they'll be interested as well :) >>> >>> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:20 AM, Yuvi Panda &lt;yuvipanda(a)gmail.com&gt; >>> wrote: >>> > Hello! >>> > >>> > We are getting closer to a general release of the Wikipedia Android >>> > and iOS apps, and I think we should standardize on a User-Agent >>> > format. The old app just appended an identifier in front of the >>> > phone's default UA[1] but I think we can do better, to avoid privacy >>> > concerns[2]. >>> > >>> > How about: >>> > >>> > WikipediaApp/<version> <OS>/<form-factor>/<version> >>> > >>> > This gives us all the info we need (App version, OS, Form Factor >>> > (Tablet / Phone) and OS version) without giving away too much. It is >>> > also fairly simple to construct and parse. >>> > >>> > For the latest alpha, my Nexus 4 would generate >>> > >>> > WikipediaApp/32 Android/Phone/4.4 >>> > >>> > While an iOS device might generate >>> > >>> > WkipediaApp/2.0 iOS/Phone/7.1 >>> > >>> > form-factor would just be Phone|Tablet for now, and can be expanded >>> > later if necessary. >>> > >>> > Thoughts? >>> > >>> > [1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile/User_agents#Apps >>> > [2]: >>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/EventLogging/UserAgentSanitization >>> > -- >>> > Yuvi Panda T >>> > http://yuvi.in/blog >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Yuvi Panda T >>> http://yuvi.in/blog >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Analytics mailing list >>> Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Dan Garry >> Associate Product Manager for Platform >> Wikimedia Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Analytics mailing list >> Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >> >> > _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

As followup: QChris did the actual work of reading the relevant RfC for me, and for now I've settled on: WikipediaApp/<version> (<OS>/<version>; <form-factor>) https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/123117/ is a WIP patch for adding this to Android, I suppose an iOS patch will come later. Checkuser work will probably take a bit more time to materialize. Thanks everyone for chiming in!

Cool. Let me know when some examples go out and I'll take a look at how our standardised UA parser treats them for the mobile metrics. On 4 April 2014 11:52, Yuvi Panda &lt;yuvipanda(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Cool. I'm going to run the ua-parser over them tomorrow to see if it recognises the devices or not, if that works? On 15 April 2014 18:31, Adam Baso &lt;abaso(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation

Sounds good. Available today? I have an open calendar 1105-1355 and 1405-COB. -Adam On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Oliver Keyes &lt;okeyes(a)wikimedia.org&gt;wrote;wrote:

Okay, worked it out for iOS. You want something like... WikipediaApp/v2.0 (iPhone OS 4_4; [tablet/mobile])

Okay, I updated https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126188/. Here's what the UA looks like: WikipediaApp/4.0 (iPhone OS 7.1; Phone) Is that right?

Note, the #.# will change from 4.0 to a #.#.# per Apple guidelines. Looks like the YAML covers that.