How effective is checkuser? Options

[Ather]

If I wanted to run several accounts how likely is checkuser to pick me up? If I changed my IP each time I logged on how would they trap me? How long to they log IP addresses for? Do they keep a permanent record of my account creation IP? Do they record me logging on but not editing? What other info do they store and for how long? All this info is needed purely for research purposes

[gomi]

This site shows you in a readable way what your browser string and other "checkuser" information looks like. It leaves out one string, "referrer", which is what page you came from, which CU also includes, and a few HTTP headers like XFF (forwarded-for, which identifies proxies). Here is one that shows all the headers, but doesn't break out the browser string pieces. There are a million of these around the web.

This page documents the interface adequately.

The only open question is whether they retain the user creation IP forever. I think they do, but don't have any proof in the code, because I can't be bothered to go look at it.

Note also that nothing in Wikipedia's checkuser data retention policy will help you if a CU wants to salt away results in a file on his or her computer for months or years. Other than that, it would appear that CU data on en.wp is retained for 90-120 days.

There are Firefox add-ons for changing your browser string and your referrer. If you're going to sock, then use them.

[Peter Damian]

The only open question is whether they retain the user creation IP forever. I think they do, but don't have any proof in the code, because I can't be bothered to go look at it.

This is the question, which has been raised a number of times in this thread.

[anthony]

The only open question is whether they retain the user creation IP forever. I think they do, but don't have any proof in the code, because I can't be bothered to go look at it.

This is the question, which has been raised a number of times in this thread.

Really? Where's the database schema? I'm pretty sure there's a field there for exactly that piece of information (*).

There are plenty of other open questions, though. For one thing, checkuser isn't the the only place IP addresses are stored. They're also in the server logs, and last time I checked the privacy policy was ambiguous about how long those are kept (and, in fact, a request to clarify it was met with something to the effect of "we don't want to help miscreants by releasing that information").

Also, even if they don't retain IP addresses automatically, checkusers still have the ability to retain them privately.

In the end, I think it's safer to just assume that your IP address is known.

(*) Hmm, it doesn't look like it is. Now that I think about it I thought it was in the logs somewhere, but I don't see it there either. I guess it's stored in cu_changes. Not sure when it's deleted from there.

This post has been edited by anthony: Thu 31st December 2009, 8:45pm

[anthony]

Really? Where's the database schema? I'm pretty sure there's a field there for exactly that piece of information.

The database schema is here, I think.

The last time I looked at it before today, it was in recent_changes. But that was relatively a long time ago, at least in Internet time. It has changed much since then.

This post has been edited by anthony: Thu 31st December 2009, 7:50pm