If you want anonymity online, you might as well just turn off the computer. Not only is not happening, but it’s getting easier to track things. In this case, it’s used for good, but like most purer things, it’s ripe for some corruption.
Wikiscanner Shows Whodunnit
Of course, you don’t really have to turn off your computer. There are anonymizing programs and websites out there that help you surf quietly, something the folks at Diebold, the CIA, Congress, and Fox News probably should have learned about before visiting Wikipedia to screw with things.
On Monday, a fun little search tool emerged that allows users to investigate who’s edited Wikipedia entries based on dedicated corporate IP blocks. Wikiscanner, developed by a Cal Tech graduate hacker named Virgil Griffith, can track those types of changes.
And thus, blow the cover off some humorous edits.
For example, Al Franken and Fox News aren’t exactly friends. The O’Reilly Radar’s (Tim, not Bill) Artur Bergman fills us in on that one. Instead of Fox News’s case being “laughed out of court,” someone from a Fox IP address decided the lawsuit was “the best thing to happen to [Franken’s] booksales.”
As Wired reports, voting machine company Diebold didn’t like a large chunk of negative information about them on the site and just deleted all of it.
And the CIA? Well, apparently they’re quite busy monitoring lyrics in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Your tax dollars at work. See at the bottom of the rubble pile, folks.
