Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia

For some Wikipedia editors, having their real-world identity discovered can be a major problem that threatens their well-being, careers, or even personal safety. There are a variety of steps you can take to help protect yourself from this happening.

The only ways to eliminate the possibility of being outed on Wikipedia are:

1. Disclose your identity yourself. Give your real name on your user page or use it as your account name. No one can reveal your real-world identity if you have already disclosed it yourself (see below).

   Important: this option is strongly discouraged – especially for children or underage users. If you are a child, do not post any personally identifiable information about yourself anywhere on Wikipedia.

2. Don't edit Wikipedia. Access and use Wikipedia only for reading purposes.

Otherwise, there are safer but non-guaranteed ways to reduce the risk of being outed (see below).

If the guaranteed methods above are not preferable or available to you, and the risk of being exposed or outed on Wikipedia is a serious concern, you should review and follow the recommendations listed below. These measures can reduce the risk of being outed on Wikipedia:

1. Do not use your real name (or anything derived from it), a nickname or username you've used elsewhere online, or any other personally identifiable information as your Wikipedia account's username.
   • For example, if your previous online usernames are variations of "SeismicGuy", do not use that username (or a similar variation) for your Wikipedia account.
2. Do not add any personal information about yourself anywhere on Wikipedia that could be used to connect your on-wiki identity to other websites or be used in search engines to find you.
3. Do not upload any images to Wikipedia that you've created yourself (such as photographs of yourself) – especially if they have been uploaded, published, or used anywhere else on the Internet – even once.
   • Images you upload to Wikipedia can be matched through reverse image searches if the same image appears elsewhere on the Internet (including social media accounts, forum accounts or forum posts, public websites where your information is present, or other personal accounts).
   • Images you upload to Wikipedia may also contain Exif metadata that reveals your name, location, or other personal information if it has not been removed before uploading. Online tools are available to check for and remove this data.
4. Do not use your primary or personal email address for any Wikipedia-related activities or communication with other editors.
   • Create and use a unique and separate email address for Wikipedia-related activities, and do not use it for any other purpose.
   • Do not send email messages from this account except through a webmail interface, which may help conceal your IP address (most webmail services do not include a sender's IP address in email headers).
   • Never send email messages from this account using a desktop or mobile email client application.
   • Avoid downloading and opening attachments from others through this email account, since malicious attachments may expose information about you.
   • Disable all inline image loading from the webmail interface and from any email clients you use to check your emails.
   • For additional privacy, select an email service that offers end-to-end encryption. Proton Mail and Tuta are free and open-source options. Additionally, Tuta never requires an additional method of verification (such as a phone number).
5. Do not enable the option that allows other Wikipedia users to email you if you are especially concerned about privacy; doing so is not required.
6. Do not email anyone on Wikipedia, even someone you completely trust.
   • Any information that you send is at risk of being accessed, read, and leaked without their knowledge if their email account is hacked.
   • This applies even to such official addresses as the Arbitration Committee mailing list.
7. Do not edit any articles related to your job, home, school, known activities, known relationships, your town or county, or anything directly related to you.
   • If you must edit such articles, do not write as though you have insider knowledge. Treat the article subject as if it were unrelated to you, and avoid revealing any personal connection to the topic.
8. Avoid sharing any personal information about yourself; keep your Wikipedia identity limited to your on-wiki activity.
   • For example, if your account is User:Example on Wikipedia, this account should be the only identity you intentionally associate with your Wikipedia activity.
9. Never meet anyone from Wikipedia in real life, over voice or video chat, telephone, instant messaging, IRC communications, or any other method that gives them more information than they see "on-wiki".
10. If your IRC username (or "nick") can be linked to your Wikipedia account's username and you use Libera Chat, consider requesting a cloak to hide your IP address.
    • Cloaks are not 100% effective however, so you may still want to connect via proxy.
11. Do not violate Wikipedia's policy on harassment or the posting of other editors' personal information yourself.

The more of these recommendations you follow, the less likely you are to be identified and outed on Wikipedia.

You might think that using your real name as your username or that self-disclosing your real name means you're already "out" and thus you can't "get outed". However, "outing" can involve much more than simply revealing your true name. Someone who doesn't like your on-wiki activities might still try to look you up online (using your real name, which you've conveniently supplied them) and post your address or other information they might find about you ("doxing") – or, inadvertently, about some unrelated person who happens to have the same name as you. Consider this before you decide to use your real name on Wikipedia – once you do so, it's already too late.

Large language models may be able to analyze the posting patterns and writing styles of pseudonymous users to help infer their identities and connect otherwise separate accounts.^{[1] [2]} Even if you use a pseudonymous Wikipedia account, you should not expect anonymity if you post anything elsewhere online written in your own voice.

This is not an invitation to edit Wikipedia in a voice other than your own; it is a caution to stay away from Wikipedia entirely if your safety is critically dependent on your anonymity being preserved. (See WP:LLM for the community's stance on using large language models to write content for Wikipedia.)

• Wikipedia:User analysis tools
• Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing
• Wikipedia:Personal security practices
• Wikipedia:How to protect your privacy on Wikipedia from outside interference
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia welcomes but warns editors who strive for anonymity
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is in the real world
• Wikipedia:Child protection
• Wikipedia:Protecting children's privacy

• Doxing: Have you tried doxing yourself? from the Wikimedia Foundation Human Rights Team