<html><head></head><body><div style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div><div>Note that contributors can use any character they want for user_name. This is more an anonymous Acronym with values such as "user_999", "_ bp _", "_ laser _", "_ creamy _", "_ rifi _" " R1 ", etc.<br></div><div class="ydpebd8d919signature"><span style="font-style:italic;color:rgb(0, 0, 191);font-weight:bold;"> <br><font face="garamond, new york, times, serif">Pierre </font><br></span></div></div>
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Le jeudi 1 mars 2018 18:18:15 HNE, Toby Murray <toby.murray@gmail.com> a écrit :
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<div><div dir="ltr">Not to rain on your account deletion party... but it may be doing less<br clear="none">than you think. User names get replicated out to anyone who consumes<br clear="none">OSM data. It is in the weekly planet dump files as well as all the<br clear="none">minutely/hourly/daily replication diff files. So your old (now<br clear="none">deleted) user name and your edits are still recorded in thousands of<br clear="none">databases across the globe. I have one on my own computer at home<br clear="none">actually. I use it to help analyze potential vandalism edits as<br clear="none">Frederik talked about.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Toby<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 3:35 PM, Jibix <<a shape="rect" href="mailto:jibix@protonmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jibix@protonmail.com</a>> wrote:<br clear="none">> Hello everyone,<br clear="none">> I've been a contributor of OpenStreetMap for a few year, with a couple of<br clear="none">> different accounts. I got them deleted today and I though it could be<br clear="none">> worthwhile talking about this here.<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> In our current era of big data, I have been more and more concerned about<br clear="none">> having all my osm edits publicly linked to my profiles, and these profiles<br clear="none">> publicly listing all these positions and places where I've been, also with<br clear="none">> somehow time information and sometimes comments, etc... visible forever by<br clear="none">> anyone, or any bot. I've looked into making the link between all that data<br clear="none">> not publicly visible, but it seems the functionality there use to be for<br clear="none">> that (anonymous editing) is not possible since 2007/2009.<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> I've read (a good few of the) related e-mails from that time [1], and I<br clear="none">> understand that there was an important ground and a general consensus for<br clear="none">> that decision, despite a minority of voice disappointed by this "security<br clear="none">> rather than freedom" direction being taken.<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> My humble point of view is that with the important evolution that OSM has<br clear="none">> experienced since back then, it would be a very good thing, if not done<br clear="none">> already, to revisit this issue and find a middle point which possibly was<br clear="none">> not easily feasible at the time but would now be more achievable. For<br clear="none">> instance, if I had a tick box "do not publicly link changes to my account",<br clear="none">> either at account level or at changeset level, but that every user still had<br clear="none">> the possibility to send a message to the author of such edits, and to roll<br clear="none">> them back (even potentially with a procedure for banning users with too much<br clear="none">> anonymous changes rolled back by the community, as the edits-author link is<br clear="none">> not lost, it's just not visible to users, whether registered or not). Then,<br clear="none">> I think, everyone would be happy, or close to? I mean, I think this would<br clear="none">> address both the concerns that led to the decision of disabling anonymous<br clear="none">> editing back in 2007 and the privacy concerns I summarised above.<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> (At the time it was also mentioned that OSM is all about being a community<br clear="none">> project, and that it was probably inconsistent to allow anonymous<br clear="none">> contributions in that context. In particular, a comparison with Wikipedia<br clear="none">> was made. My opinion on this is that location-related information are in<br clear="none">> general much more privacy-critical than Wikipedia edits are, in particular<br clear="none">> now that you have user-friendly mobile apps for mapping on the go, and<br clear="none">> therefore the comparison is inappropriate.)<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> I've been looking a bit around to see if there was a plan for developing<br clear="none">> something like that anytime soon, or if it had been implemented already, but<br clear="none">> I couldn't find. I've mailed the support team, who confirmed there is<br clear="none">> currently no way (other than closing an account) to make edits become<br clear="none">> anonymous.<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> Therefore I'm afraid the only way forward I see to address my concerns is<br clear="none">> the following:<br clear="none">> 1) on the one hand having my past accounts deleted, for the corresponding<br clear="none">> change-sets not to be linked any more to my name or pseudonym. I got that<br clear="none">> done today.<br clear="none">> 2) on the other hand, from now on, to periodically create and abandon<br clear="none">> accounts for keeping editing without a massive correlation of data being too<br clear="none">> easily possible (but even like that it's an unperfect tradeoff).<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> I'm not sure how much of the community is having concerns similar to mine,<br clear="none">> but I would guess that these can only have gone bigger and bigger since back<br clear="none">> in 2007. As said above, I believe it would be worth having a think about it<br clear="none">> again. (But maybe it has already been discussed again recently, and I didn't<br clear="none">> find out?)<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> What are your thoughts?<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> Looking forward,<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> Jibix<br clear="none">><br clear="none">> [1]:<br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-October/thread.html#18853" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-October/thread.html#18853</a><br clear="none">><br clear="none">> --<br clear="none">> Jibix<br clear="none">> favourite webpage of the moment:<br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="https://degooglisons-internet.org/alternatives?l=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://degooglisons-internet.org/alternatives?l=en</a><br clear="none">><br clear="none">><br clear="none">><br clear="none">> _______________________________________________<br clear="none">> talk mailing list<br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">talk@openstreetmap.org</a><br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk</a><div class="ydp725f3409yqt7807287953" id="ydp725f3409yqtfd52591"><br clear="none">><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">talk mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">talk@openstreetmap.org</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk</a><br clear="none"></div></div></div>
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