Soon, temporary accounts will be deployed across Wikimedia wikis. If you're out of the loop, this means that anonymous editors will no longer be identified by IP addresses; instead, they will be identified using auto-generated usernames (e.g. ~2025-412312). The reason why I'm coming here is because I want to talk about how this will change the way anonymous sockpuppets are discussed at SPI. Namely, will it still be prohibited to disclose that a temporary account and a registered account are connected, like with IP addresses? Also, several global groups (stewards, global rollbackers, abuse filter helpers, and abuse filter maintainers) have the ability to check the IP addresses of temporary accounts across all Wikimedia projects, so what role, if any, will they play in SPI here after the rollout? JJP_Master (she/they) 03:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not much will change, apart from clerks having to occasionally deal with inappropriate disclosure of IP addresses. Local access to IP addresses of temporary accounts will be granted on request to any editor with at least six months standing and at least three hundred total edits and at least one edit or logged action in the last 365 days. Given those relatively low requirements, users with access probably shouldn't have any special role in SPI and connecting an temporary account to a registered one with CheckUser tools is clearly not okay. Sir Sputnik (talk) 04:21, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the purpose of temporary accounts is to fully remove IP addresses relating to edits from public access. The issue with publicly linking an IP account with a named account is that it breaks that privacy for the named account. With temporary accounts, there is no public-facing issue with connecting temporary accounts with named accounts in that way, as neither will have accessible IP addresses. The IP addresses for temporary accounts will be more widely available than the IP addresses of named accounts, but not remotely to the same magnitude as the reduction of visibility from the current fully public display. The change does not make IP addresses of named accounts more visible, so those able to see temporary account IP addresses will not have any additional ability to link temporary accounts to named accounts. That said, one change that probably should happen is that there is a general agreement that IP addresses will not be directly copied out in SPI reports. CMD (talk) 04:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine a CheckUser telling a non-CheckUser which IP address another registered account was editing from. That might be concerning, right?

Connecting registered and temporary accounts would be equivalent to telling that IP information to every editor who meets the requirements Sir Sputnik described. That's completely irreconcilable with the current policy and consensus around the use of CheckUser. jlwoodwa (talk) 05:29, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't disagree that anything might be concerning, although that seems a broad question. The current policy and consensus was created in the environment of public IP addresses, which we are leaving. Checkusers are not limited to IP addresses, and the new accounts are cookie based, so unless more details are shared it won't be possible to know what data they use to link accounts. CMD (talk) 06:01, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, this is Szymon, you may know me from discussions about the Foundation's Product and Tech topics. I'm on the Trust and Safety Product team working on temp accounts. I read your convo and asked our lawyers if it would be OK to publicly document connections between temp and regular accounts for LTA/sockpuppet investigation purposes.

The answer is: it is OK to document non-CU-level evidence, like editing patterns. But documenting publicly that a temp account and a regular account are connected based on evidence restricted for CUs would be against the policy. Even if IP addresses wouldn't be noted publicly.

Does this help clarify the situation? Would you have any other questions? Thanks, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is an obvious sock at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Slomzy0932 with a very small amount of edits to be examined, a case that should not take a lot of time to be processed. It would be helpful if someone could take a look.--NØ 05:32, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging TheresNoTime, who processed the last one.--NØ 18:17, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done, thanks for the ping :) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]