
Ask HN: Could Wikipedia show hashed IP addresses instead? - u-dissolve
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&#x27;s contributions, and ban them when necessary. IP range blocks could still be issued server-side.<p>The IP addresses of registered users are hidden anyways (accessible only by a few certain users, and <i>only</i> if warranted[1]), so could Wikipedia offer this to all users?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WP:CheckUser
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pnako
It would be trivial to brute force, so almost pointless.

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u-dissolve
Yes, 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?

