Author: folengo
Description:
This is a Wikimedia projects only suggestion/request. This could remain optional for Mediawiki software used outside the Wikimedia Foundation.
The Wikimedia Foundation' s privacy policy (1) states that : "Except as described above, Wikimedia policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances", meaning that notwithstanding a few exception (like a request from a judge), the Foundation does not transmit the users' IP addresses to third parties.
At present, when a user reads an image description page on the French language Wikipedia, his or her IP address is being sent to an external website called "pacli.appspot.com". This is connected to the "order a poster print of this picture/Obtenir un poster de cette image" link on the top of the page.
For example, if you access [[:fr:Fichier:Tigeress with cubs in Kanha Tiger reserve.jpg]] with Firefox, then select "Page Info / Media" in the tools menu of Firefox, you can see that a file has been downloaded to your computer from the following address : http://pacli.appspot.com/posterstats/tick?page=Fichier:Tigeress_with_cubs_in_Kanha_Tiger_reserve.jpg&position=showLink
That means that at present, the owner of the pacli.appspot.com website is able to compute a database of all the IP adresses of Wikipedia users reading image description pages on the French Wikipedia. It is very easy for this owner to know the IP address of the picture's uploader, because the uploader's IP is the first IP address ever accessing that particular picture. As far as I know, nothing prevents that website's owner to further disseminate the collected IP addresses.
Perhaps this problem will be solved by editing the javascipt used on the French Wikipedia. But in order to prevent this sort of situation from occurring on a variety of Wikimedia projects, some sort of filter might be implemented, forbidding this kind of javascript codes from being inserted into Wikimedia projects without users' knowledge.
(1) [[:foundation:Privacy policy]] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement