[OSM-talk] Maintaining privacy as a casual mapper

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 3 nov 2019, alle ore 19:22, Blake Girardot <bgirardot at gmail.com> ha scritto:
> 
> If you do not mind using your existing gmail account,
> assuming you signed up using one, use the gmail "+something" (the
> actual plus symbol goes in) email address feature so you can sign up
> for a new OSM account. Google for how to do that "gmail + email
> addresses" or something should


it depends from whom you hide, but generally you should not use a traceable email account if you want to remain anonymous. Using Google would seem like a total no-go (they are even reserving the right to read your emails). Use a live distro like tails (tor browser, spoofs browser a system details, etc. ), do not connect from your home or someone else’s home or any other places that you are related to, do not use a third party login but create a new account for every edit you make and use throw away email addresses for signup. Use generic user names and email addresses created by a random string generator, only use the most common tools like iD and maybe josm, do not use rarely used tags, avoid changeset comments and other free text fields like description and note.

This would still reveal something about you (e.g. technology affinity), but it would not be sufficient alone to identify you.

On the other hand, it would also make it impossible or practically impossible to participate in comunity discussions, get information about y  changeset comments, messages etc. If everybody would do it, OpenStreetMap would likely not work anymore, because the community aspect is key to our success, and complete anonymity kills the community. 
Creating a new account for every edit and refraining from edits with mobile devices also makes it more tedious to edit the map, although this could probably be automated.

Consider the above for edits in sensitive areas and loosen the precautions when it is less critical. ;)

Cheers Martin