Friday, August 17, 2007

Tool exposes self-edits in Wikipedia

A word of caution about editing entries "anonymously" in Wikipedia: a tool has been developed that can show who made the changes.

Virgil Griffith, who will be a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology starting in September, has developed <A HREF="http://www.cio.com/article/131201/New_Tool_Exposes_Self_Edits_in_Wikipedia">Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool</A> that traces the IP address of people who make edits to the online encyclopedia.

While Wikipedia allows anyone to make edits, it keeps detailed logs of the changes made. And although people can make changes without identifying themselves, the changes often create digital fingerprints that provide information about the user, such as the location of the computer used to make the edit.

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