Wikipedia Scanner

Wikipedia Scanner is a new site that tracks edits made on Wikipedia. The reason this was created was to see who is behind edits that are being made on Wikipedia, and also for transparency sake for self-interested corporations trying to protect their company or promote themselves. The software was created by Virgil Griffith, a CalTech Student. WikiScanner searchs XML-based records in Wikipedia and then cross-references them with public and private IP and domain information to determine who is behind edits that are made. There are different ways to search on WikiScanner, such as organization name, URL, IP address etc.

In his research, Griffith found that a lot of edits for company entries are being made by companies themselves, something that has been speculated on for some time but unproven until now. Currently, Wikipedia is working on a new editing system that will make it even easier to track changes made to entries. Among the early culprits that were found, Diebold deleted 15 paragraphs from a URL on Diebold that was critical of it’s voting machines, the CIA and political campaigns.

CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.
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The changes may violate Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.

Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.

Aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed.

CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that "the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly."

The FBI did not have an immediate response.

Computers at numerous other organizations and companies were found to have been involved in editing articles related to them.

Griffith said he developed WikiScanner "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to."

It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization's network.

It violates Wikipedia's neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's parent organization.

However, she said, "Wikipedia is self-correcting," meaning misleading entries can be quickly revised by another editor. She said Wikimedia welcomed the WikiScanner.

WikiScanner can be found at wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

Edits originating from IP addresses owned by Democrats, the House of Representatives, Senate Sergeant of Arms personnel, and others are revealed by a new tool called WikiScanner. Slashdot covers the tool and points to an interesting contest:

“Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job.”

Let the scanning begin.

Update:
They’re busy in the House. Topics of interest include masturbation, prostitutes, gay musicians, buttocks, LGBT Jews, bow tie wearers, effeminancy, and May-December romances.

Update II:
Someone at the DNC edited, butchered really, Rush Limbaugh’s Wikipedia entry.

WikiScanner Reveals Edits to Wikipedia
By Brian Bergstein
August 16, 2007 

The free WikiScanner grabs the Internet Protocol addresses used in anonymous Wikipedia edits in the past five years, and by combining that with public information about which IP addresses belong to whom, the WikiScanner reveals Wikipedia changes made from computers assigned to many organizations, including The Associated Press.

What edits on Wikipedia have been made by people in congressional offices, the CIA and the Church of Scientology? A new online tool called WikiScanner reveals answers to such questions.

As the Web encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia encourages participants to adopt online user names, but it also lets contributors be identified simply by their computers' numeric Internet addresses.

Often that does not provide much of a cloak, such as when PCs in congressional offices were discovered to have been involved in Wikipedia entries trashing political rivals.

Those episodes inspired Virgil Griffith, a computer scientist about to enter grad school at CalTech, to automate the process with WikiScanner. (It's at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but intense attention has knocked it out of service many times this week.)

The free Scanner grabs the Internet Protocol addresses used in anonymous Wikipedia edits in the past five years. By combining that with public information about which IP addresses belong to whom, the Scanner reveals Wikipedia changes made from computers assigned to many organizations, including The Associated Press.

Many of the edits are predictably self-interested: PCs in Scientology officialdom were used to remove criticism in the church's Wikipedia entry. But others hint at procrastinating office workers, such as the tweaks to Wikipedia articles on TV shows being made from CIA computers.

Many examples are being tallied at http://wired.reddit.com/wikidgame -- a page run by Wired News, which reported earlier on WikiScanner.

Griffith wrote on his site that he hopes "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike."

Whatever comes of it, WikiScanner has a fan in Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. "It is fabulous and I strongly support it," Wales told the AP.

Wikipedia is only as anonymous as your IP

Virgil Griffith, a good friend and fellow hacker, reminds us today that anonymity on the internet does not really exist. With his newly released search tool Wikiscanner, you can search an index of 35 million Wikipedia edits by IP, allowing you to find edits coming from within organizations like the CIA or the EFF (bonus if you can find something about Kevin Bankston smoking).

Finding out that someone from the Fox News network changed this:

The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken's book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the [[National Public Radio]] program ''[[Fresh Air]]'' on [[September 3]], [[2003]], Franken said that Fox's case against him was "literally laughed out of court" and that "wholly (holy) without merit" is a good characterization of Fox News itself.

into

The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken's book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal [[National Public Radio]] program ''[[Fresh Air]]'' on [[September 3]], [[2003]], Franken said that Fox's case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.

is quite amusing.

 
A Drug companie rewrites entry on Wikipedia


AstraZeneca deleted references to claims that taking Seroquel carries a risk for teenagers: they will be more likely thinking about harming or killing themselves when taking this drug. The deleter was a user of a computer shown to be registered to the drug company. The FDA proposed that makers of antidepressants including AstraZeneca update their text to include warnings over increased risk of suicidal thinking in young adults.
Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses. This program cannot identify the individual behind the computer but it can identify the computer and the network it is on.
Other misuse of Wipipedia is on Godlike productions.
Would like to find some more pharmaceutical companies but the site is down, to many interested readers or drug companies again?

How To Use Wikiscanner

I am going to file this under, “the Internet is a strange a beautiful world.” Virgil Griffith has recently finished a mashup that links the IP address’ of organizations to Wikipedia edits that they have made. There is a lot of information to explore, so here are a few amusing facts that we learned from our initial dive.

U.S. House Of Representatives

IP address’ found to be originating from the U.S. House of Representatives seem to spend an inordinate amount of time editing articles on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual people.

Take a look here for one of their multitude of edits, and follow the bouncing link to see the pattern.

Diebold

Diebold, a company that has recently been in the news for making voting machines that were at best, faulty, took it upon themselves to remove all instances of criticism from their Wikipedia page. Take a look at the Threat Level article for more items of interest to Diebold.

Political Parties

All I am going to say about the edits that someone at the Democratic Party made to Rush Limbaugh’s Wikipedia page is that “jerkoff” probably fails the Wikipedia objectivity test. Over in the Republican’s camp, they seem really interested in adding flag icons to Academy Award winner directors, and twiddling with Walt Whitman’s page.

Wal*Mart

Finally, Wal*Mart’s biggest interest is, not surprisingly, Wal*Mart. Coming in a close second, however, is their desire to produce the most accurate listing of video games on the planet. In a not too distant third, a distaste for Ann Coulter.

Web 2.0 Roundup

There is so much more you can learn from this mashup, but I warn you it is addicting. Tell me what your favorite discovery was, and where you found, it in the comments.

Software enables all to see who’s editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia Scanner is a new site that tracks edits made on Wikipedia. The reason this was created was to see who is behind edits that are being made on Wikipedia, and also for transparency sake for self-interested corporations trying to protect their company or promote themselves. The software was created by Virgil Griffith, a CalTech Student. WikiScanner searchs XML-based records in Wikipedia and then cross-references them with public and private IP and domain information to determine who is behind edits that are made. There are different ways to search on WikiScanner, such as organization name, URL, IP address etc.

In his research, Griffith found that a lot of edits for company entries are being made by companies themselves, something that has been speculated on for some time but unproven until now. Currently, Wikipedia is working on a new editing system that will make it even easier to track changes made to entries. Among the early culprits that were found, Diebold deleted 15 paragraphs from a URL on Diebold that was critical of it’s voting machines, the CIA and political campaigns.

I was surprised not to see a thread on this in here already since it has the potential to cause all sorts of people all sorts of embarrassment. In a nutshell someone has taken a dump of all the Wikipedia edits for the past 5 years and has chucked it into a very nice searchable database. You can look up IP ranges right on the site and it will bring back all the edits made by that range along with a nice link to the diff so you can see what was changed.

The link is: http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr

Wikipedia touts itself as the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but a new online tool now makes it harder for those with an agenda to edit it in a sneaky fashion.

Ordinarily Wikipedia allows anyone to edit its articles, and the encyclopedia has become a target for vandals, revisionists and spin doctors. In an effort to keep Wikipedia more honest, U.S. graduate student Virgil Griffiths created WikiScanner, a site that can trace the IP addresses of computers that have made edits to Wikipedia entries in the last five years.

WikiScanner creator Virgil Griffiths created the online tool to see what people and organizations are up to when editing Wikipedia.WikiScanner creator Virgil Griffiths created the online tool to see what people and organizations are up to when editing Wikipedia.
(Jake Appelbaum)

While WikiScanner cannot identify the specific people making changes, it can locate the exact computer the changes came from. This has led to embarrassing exposures for some political parties and other groups — which is exactly what creator Virgil Griffiths had in mind.

"[I want] to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike," he wrote on his website. He also wants "to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards), are up to."

His site shows that some organizations are up to quite a lot on Wikipedia. While many Wikipedia edits are simply factual corrections or spelling and grammar fixes, some use the encyclopedia to trash political rivals and companies or excise unflattering details about themselves.

The practice extends to Canada as well, as many such changes can be traced back to Canadian government IP addresses. The site shows edits to articles originating from computers in government offices, including the House of Commons, Environment Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Over 11,000 changes to Wikipedia articles, including major edits to articles about parliamentarians, were discovered through use of WikiScanner, according to a Globe and Mail article Thursday. One such example showed the article on Paul Martin, which was edited to read "Paul Martin was the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history."

But Canadian examples may be among the most tame. Wired magazine has already compiled a list of "salacious edits." Among the more notable on the list: a user at Exxon-Mobil pooh-poohed the environmental impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill; an FBI computer removed aerial images of Guantanamo Bay; and someone using a Reuters IP address called U.S. President George W. Bush a mass murderer.

Griffiths said his project is not intended to eliminate anonymity, but rather to preserve Wikipedia's credibility.

"I do not believe something like WikiScanner, which identifies people, is necessary. Overall — especially for non-controversial topics — Wikipedia already works," he writes. "For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one. For any sort of 'open' project, I strongly prefer allowing people to remain anonymous while also doing various back-end analyses to counteract vandalism and disinformation."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales obviously appreciates the effort.

"It is fabulous and I strongly support it," Wales said

"Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job."

WikiScanner: Anonymous You Have a Problem

There is a new tool out there that can show who made anonymous changes to Wikipedia.

Virgil Griffith, who will graduate soon from the California Institute of Technology has developed what he calls the Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool that traces the IP address of people who make edits to the online encyclopedia.

The scanner has already traced entries at several large companies who appear to have altered potentially damaging content.

For example someone on Wal-mart altered a line about the wages it pays to employees. The original line stated that “wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at other retail stores” while the new one says “The average wage at Wal-mart is almost double the federal minimum wage”

Other example comes from an employee at Diebold Inc (election systems company) who cut large sections of an entry about concerns of security experts over the integrity of Diebold’s systems, as well as information about the relationship between its CEO and President Bush.

The last interesting change came from a BBC employee who altered George Bush middle Name from “Walker” to “Wanker”

Government agencies have been pinned as the origins of more than 11,000 changes to articles over Wikipedia.com, according to The Globe and Mail.

The information appeared after yesterday's news on the WikiScanner release. WikiScanner is a newly-developed tool that can track the IP addresses of Wikipedia editors straight to the source. The tool can also determine editing sources for entries that have existed since Wikipedia was launched.


Though many edits are simply fact corrections, a large number removed criticisms about politicians, added positive comments, and also inserted negative comments on political rivals.

And its not just politics they're editing. A government office in Ottawa added the following sentences to the entry "homosexuality": "Homosexuality is evil," "Homosexuality is wrong according to the Bible" and "Homosexuals need our help and counseling."

Sure to fuel conspiracy theories for the next dozen years, America's CIA has also edited a number of entries, ranging from military operations and presidential biographies, to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and information on singer Richard Marx, according to Australia's ABC.

While in some cases the information of a government official or agency may add value to an entry, some worry that WikiScanner all too clearly reveals a not-so-democratic edge to the democratic encyclopedia.

This is a journalist’s dream come true! You can now discover which organizations (or at least their IP address) have added or edited entries on Wikipedia using the WikiScanner. Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at Cal Tech, developed the tool. Why did he do it? In his list of FAQs for the media he writes, “To create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.” Check out what Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, the CIA, and the U.S. House of Representatives have being editing on Wikipedia. Gotta love the web for the transparency it brings.

Ah, Wikipedia. Many of us at Grist frequently use this resource, but we do so knowing that just about anyone can edit a Wikipedia article at anytime. So, can we really trust the information contained within?

Fear not! As Wired reports, there is a new tool that sheds some light on who is editing what:

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

And you can do your own sleuthing and share your discoveries on a special Wired resource powered by reddit called wikidgame. Here are some of the environment-related edits reported:

* ExxonMobil whitewashes Valdez cleanup story
* "Bad luck & poor investments" caused bankruptcy of native tribe destroyed by Exxon-Valdez spill
* The NRA changes "hunting" to "wildlife conservation & management"
* ChevronTexaco deletes "Biodiesel," Iraq fine
* Dow removes references to Bhopal, Agent Orange, breast implants
* Monsanto user spins Roundup effects

Want to know just who's vandalizing a Wikipedia page? Look no further than the WikiScanner, a project by Virgil Griffith, a CalTech grad who put together a little tool that's already exposed a number of interesting vandals. For example, according to a Wired write-up, "Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush." Now that selectively editing Wikipedia isn't so anonymous anymore, it should be interesting to see exactly who is exposed doing what to the online encyclopedia.

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.

The purpose of this service is to see who’s behind edits made, and how these actions generally lend themselves towards the self-interested corporations hoping to promote and protect brand identities. Created by CalTech student Virgil Griffith, WikiScanner searches the entirety of the XML-based records in Wikipedia and cross-references them with public and private IP and domain information to see who is behind the edits made on the online encyclopedia. With WikiScanner, there are a few levels on which you can search for info, including organization name, exact Wikipedia URL, or IP address, among others.

In what could be considered a sociology experiment, Griffith found that a good portion of edits for company entries are being made by the companies themselves. This isn’t surprising at all–it’s something that’s been speculated upon, and tested on a smaller scale. The team behind Wikipedia is also aware of it, and has been working to deal with issues such as this. Wikipedia’s policies have changed since it’s onset, and the user-generated system has been improved as a result. There is also a new edit-marking system that’s currently being tested on Wikia for possible use on Wikipedia in the future, making it even easier to track changes made to entries.

Another way to peek under the hood of other websites is the recently launched BuiltWith.