Core Platform Team/Initiative/IP Masking/Initiative Vision

< IP Masking

Vision: Find a new balance of privacy needs of anonymous users with moderation of content
Target Group(s): Anonymous users Moderators Anti-harassment Tools Legal	Needs: Anons: Durable identity Anons: Establish a reputation Anons: Find their own edits Anons: Get messages on a talk page Anons: Keep potentially identifying information safe Mods: IP-based blocks Mods: judge bad actors by IP information AHT: Support community configuration AHT: new UIs for IP review Legal: Modern privacy framework	Product: New unique identifier for anonymous users. This identifier should be linked to a device, but should not include identifiable information such as the IP address. Edits should show this identifier as the actor for the edit. Limit review of IP addresses. IP addresses should be stored at edit time, but should be visible only to users who have been granted the right to do so (usually to check for blocking or sock puppets). Sunset IP addresses. After a certain amount of time (first estimate is 90 days, but might be more if necessary), the IP address used to make an edit should be scrubbed from the system. Revise IP dependencies. We will need to find parts of our codebase that expect anonymous editors to be identified with an IPv4 or IPv6 address, and make sure they work with new, anonymized identifiers. IP data APIs. APIs to help AHT build tools to analyse IP addresses, for high-privilege users.	Aligned Goals: Our product development principles say that we support internal product teams with platform changes. We’ve committed to support Community Tech and Anti-Harassment Tools in this goal. "We evolve the platform and storage for the next decade."