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Ask HN: Could Wikipedia show hashed IP addresses instead?
When an unregistered Wikipedia user makes a contribution, it shows the IP address from which the edit was made instead of a username. In the interest of privacy, could Wikipedia instead display a hash of the IP address? They could still keep track of an IP address's contributions, and ban them when necessary. IP range blocks could still be issued server-side.
The IP addresses of registered users are hidden anyways (accessible only by a few certain users, and only if warranted[1]), so could Wikipedia offer this to all users?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CheckUser
- pnako 7y agoIt would be trivial to brute force, so almost pointless.
- u-dissolve 7y agoYes, but brute forcing would take longer to do. Could they also hash it, say, a few thousand times in order to increase the cost of brute forcing? Isn't some layer of obfuscation better than a bare IP address?