[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Privacy Policy: Update to account for CheckUser access

Fri Apr 14 13:19:04 UTC 2006

The Privacy policy at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy is now out of date,
since it precedes the large scale use of "CheckUser" and claims only
"developers" have access to the IPs of logged in users.

I am suggested a revised version at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/Privacy_policy (see
http://tinyurl.com/nbguc for a diff from the current version).

The main changes are to these two paragraphs:

"IP addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records
in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network
addresses of edits in investigating abuse of the wiki, including the
suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts),
vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the wiki."

"It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data
collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via
the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or
users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:"

I intend to propose that the Board accept the new draft as official
policy, but would appreciate feedback or further improvements before
then. Please comment on this list, or at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy

Thanks.

Angela.