Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/Identity protection for functionaries

Random proposal ►◄ Larger suggestions  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Identity protection for functionaries

• Problem: Functionaries get doxxed on and off Wikimedia projects, and receive threats of harm and have had things happen to them in real life. Many countries, including the United States, do not have proper legal protections regarding publication of private information, and county and state records including birth certificate and property deed information wind up on data sharing sites.
• Proposed solution: For functionaries, provide an identity protection service like DeleteMe and/or general identity theft protection (plenty of companies do this in the US). Provide equivalent services in other countries. Also write up a guide as to basic identity protection practices (there are plenty out there for high-risk journalists, for example).
• Who would benefit: Functionaries, and users served by those functionaries.
• More comments: It might be possible to convince companies to provide this service as a gesture of goodwill and charity.
• Phabricator tickets:
• Proposer: Rschen7754 02:07, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• See en:Wikipedia:Functionaries to learn that "functionary" is a technical term in Wikipedia....
• so... this deleteme service basically files "Right to be forgotten" requests with google and makes things disappear from google and other search engines ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:17, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Not Google, but data brokers like Spokeo and Intellius. [1] --Rschen7754 19:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
    • Well I'm seeing as an immediate issue, the fact that the Foundation has formally stated its opposition to the concept of "right to be forgotten" and suchlike. I can't imagine they'd be in favour of backing this, even though they are, of course, against the editors being doxxed. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure how relevant that is - we talk about people who are notable, but then we don't go and publish celebrity home addresses on Wikipedia. --Rschen7754 19:03, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support I doubt this would turn out to be worthwhile but it's an important enough problem to merit official investigation of the proposal, IMO. Tgr (talk) 00:46, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Support JPxG (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Support Libcub (talk) 01:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 17:40, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose The underlying issue is important but I don't see why it should be limited to functionaries or how companies providing "identity protection services" would help here. For instance if you're part of a group of people that is persecuted (either by states or other groups of people), having your identity revealed can be really problematic in any case. For instance if you're homosexual, in some countries you can be killed for that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homosexuality), and contributing to articles on the topic. For instance [[LGBTQI+ rights in <country where homosexuality is illegal>]]) can get you in trouble. The same issue applies to some political topics in many countries. The consequence is that repression against people directly affect the neutral point of view of Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia. To fix that, the Wikimedia projects themselves should rather be proactive in protecting contributors identity rather than trying to fix it when it's too late and not fixable anymore. Wikipedia pages (including the history) can be archived for instance. Nowadays:
  • It's possible to create accounts through Tor or to create multiple accounts, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Request_an_account
  • There is already a policy to follow when using multiple accounts that is documented in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy#Using_multiple_accounts and in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry .
  • The CreateAccount page on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount) already has the following text: "Consider using a username other than your real name, as usernames are public and cannot be made private later." (that page doesn't work with Tor though).

What we could do to improve the situation is probably to find what prevents people from contributing to projects like Wikipedia in these situations and fix it. For instance before writing this reply, I wasn't aware of the policies, and I assumed that it was not possible to create additional accounts to avoid political persecution. Though I do edit Wikipedia through Tor and for that I had to request an exemption. Though sometimes even if I'm logged, I've to use a new route to edit as I'm somehow blocked even with the exemption, but after very few retries it usually works. Without the exemption I don't think I could do any editions at all from Tor. Another area of work would be to have guides to help persecuted people contribute to projects like Wikipedia and still stay safe. Using the tor-browser (with or without bridges depending on the country and the political situation), avoiding being identified through Stylometry, etc could probably help too. The issue here would be to find people persecuted people that are willing to explain why they don't contribute. The Tor and the Tails projects already interviewed people anonymously to understand better the needs of their users, so they also have experience with that. In addition they have to distribute bridges in countries where you could get in trouble for that, so some people involved probably have some experience with helping people facing persecution in ways that don't backfire. GNUtoo (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

•  Support KingAntenor (talk) 07:16, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose Xavier Dengra (MESSAGES) 23:42, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Support This is important to not harass or bribe the functionaries (Checkusers, oversighters, stewards). Also we can give the global bureaucrat permission (some are not comfortable to sign the confidentiality agreement) Thingofme (talk) 13:14, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Support —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contrib} (he/him) 22:24, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 19:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
•  Oppose already too powerful and well-protected. 4nn1l2 (talk) 13:39, 11 February 2022 (UTC)