Talk:Anonymous edits

This page will be linked directly from Potlatch on the main site. Please do not use the main page for discussion. Put it here, or better still, on the talk list. --Richard 22:41, 27 October 2007 (BST)

Vacation mode

I dislike the enforcement to this kind of public editing. In principle, it's no problem when I am mapping around my home. Everyone should see my edits and make stats on them, if he or she want to do so. But I do not want this for edits outside my home region, because there is for example the possibility of generating a location and time based movement profile on myself.

So I really desire something like a vacation mode, which could be implemented as a property of the changeset, e.g. anonymous=yes. For such changesets, the database server should not hand out the mapper id to everyone. To contact the editor of such a changeset, you could make a contact form that sends a private message to the mapper.

I met this problem, because I am working outside my home region for some months at the time. So instead of fixing things in OSM directly I only have the possibility to flood OpenStreetBugs. To create an intermediate account is also not a good idea, as I have to register with an unused e-mail address. Using a disposable address for this is not really an option. It would be hard to contact me afterwards.

Some more comments on your reasons for public editing:

It's only your mapping username that is associated with changes to the map. If you don't want anyone to find out who Mapper32 really is, they won't.

In principle, only one correlation between your real name and your OSM id somewhere in the Internet is enough to by-pass this. So your approach is security by obscurity, not security by design. Trying to prevent myself from this means: not to go to mapping parties, not to contact local mappers, not to tell someone that I am working on OSM. To give you an example: I told my colleagues about OSM. The next day, one of them asked me, if I am the mapper called Plasmon. Maybe he guessed, that I edited the area around the company's building. It's not a big thing to mention this little fact on a website...

The change brings us more into line with successful communities like Wikipedia. If you have an account at Wikipedia, your username is always described in the history of pages you edit, and people can send you messages. Even if you don't have an account, your IP address (your computer's unique identifier on the Internet) is marked, which people can use to send you messages via Wikipedia.

IP addresses typically change at least every day, so anonymous editing is possible! And Wikipedia does not contain any time-location related information about myself. So this comparison is not valid.

Unfortunately, this meant that anonymous mappers - usually accidentally - could delete other people's hard work, and it was impossible for anyone to contact them. If experienced OpenStreetMap users had the chance to contact such users, via the site's own message system, then they could help them to avoid such mistakes, reducing the chances of work being deleted.

Technically it was not impossible to contact them, as all necessary data was stored in the database. How else should the "Make my edits public" button work? It would have been no big thing to make an anonymous contact form, let's say to send a private message to the editor of changeset #12345. It is not necessary, that everybody knows his OSM id. It is enough, if this assignment is stored confidentially in the database.

Thanks a lot.

--Plasmon 18:47, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

These seem like valid concerns, on the other hand nobody else seems to be too worried about any of this. Your suggestion of an "anonymous but contactable" mode for changesets, might be viable.

It would be awesome if new users didn't have to register an account at all to edit, just like on wikipedia. Bare in mind though that our anti-vandalism capabilities are rather more limited than on wikipedia. It's more complicated because map data is more complicated than text (in particular change rollback is more complex) There's development work to do in this direction before we try adjusting our policies on anonymous editing.

-- Harry Wood 20:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Safety of making edits public

In the edit Special:Diff/257894, Harry Wood essentially downplayed the risks of making edits public:

We strongly encourage you to … simply click "Make my edits public" without worry[ing] about it

That edit also added most of the text explaining why making edits public was supposedly safe.

That edit was more than 14 years ago, yet the current version is substantially the same as the version after that edit. And I have not seen any other OpenStreetMap advice on the safety of making location data public.

But the rest of the world has moved on, recognising the privacy risks of revealing even small amounts of data. Where does the OpenStreetMap community stand on this? BrianDrake (talk) 13:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Well the world has certainly moved on from the "Anonymous Edits" OpenStreetMap feature which hasn't been enabled since 2007! In the highly unlikely case that you created an OpenStreetMap account before 2007 and ran it in the old "anonymous edits" mode, and you still have it in anonymous editing mode, and now (16 years later) you are deciding you want to make edits to OpenStreetMap again... Well actually maybe I will adjust that text now. Perhaps given the 16 year time gap, maybe it does make most sense for you to create a new account instead (which will not be in anonymous edits mode)

But of course the old 2007 "Anonymous Edits" OpenStreetMap feature is not the reason you found this page. Let me also propose we renaming this page to make it clearer.

--- Harry Wood (talk) 15:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I wrote: ‘the rest of the world has moved on, recognising the privacy risks of revealing even small amounts of data’ (emphasis added). This (rather than the old anonymous edits feature) is my main concern, and you haven’t addressed it at all. And while this concern goes unaddressed, this page sits here, offering hopelessly naïve advice.

I did a web search for ‘anonymous location data’, and the first result was Opinion | Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy - The New York Times:

Yes, the location data contains billions of data points with no identifiable information like names or email addresses. But it’s child’s play to connect real names to the dots that appear on the maps.

…

In most cases, ascertaining a home location and an office location was enough to identify a person. Consider your daily commute: Would any other smartphone travel directly between your house and your office every day?

Describing location data as anonymous is “a completely false claim” that has been debunked in multiple studies, Paul Ohm, a law professor and privacy researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, told us. “Really precise, longitudinal geolocation information is absolutely impossible to anonymize.”

“D.N.A.,” he added, “is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”

There is much more detail in that article, and countless other public sources have debunked the idea of anonymous location data.

The main OpenStreetMap data (not GPS tracks) is not as detailed as the data being discussed in that article, so it won’t give away identities as readily. But the basic points are still valid. Plasmon’s comment above (which you acknowledged as describing valid concerns) mentions office locations, and I have seen at least one home mapped in a place where surrounding homes don’t even have building outlines (suggesting that the mapper has a special connection with that home).

There are countless other ways that users could be identified, and once identified, they remain identified forever.

BrianDrake (talk) 13:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

(Slightly off-topic: That edit also added __NOTOC__. Why?)

BrianDrake (talk) 13:36, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Propose rename "Anonymous Edits" -> "Old 'Anonymous Edits' feature"

I propose we rename this page now from "Anonymous Edits" to "Old 'Anonymous Edits' feature". I hope that will help to clarify that this page is about a feature which used to exist in OpenStreetMap in 2007. The page also describes some generally applicable concepts of anonymity (and the fact that you can indeed remain completely anonymous!) but we could explain those things better on some other page title.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 15:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

The description of the general concepts is hopelessly naïve (see my comment above). It should be completely removed from this page and added to another page with major changes.

BrianDrake (talk) 13:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)