Wikipedia:IP edits are not anonymous

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Shortcut WP:IPANON

Editing Wikipedia with an IP address as your identifier is often less anonymous than editing with a normal account.

Your IP address usually links you to an

lookups may identify you, your employer or school, or computers that use your address, including mail or web servers. All of these provide mechanisms for curious individuals to determine where you live or who you are. This is more information than is available about an editor who registers an account and uses the account name instead of an IP address to sign their edits.

If you edit from an

is, at a minimum, controversial, and users editing via these proxies are most of the time blocked from editing, until you disconnect from anonymity networks due to problems of vandalism on anonymous networks such as Tor, proxies, and VPNs.

Some registered Wikipedia editors and administrators treat IP address editors as (at best) unwelcome party-crashers or as potential vandals. Some ignore the opinions or revert the edits of IP address editors simply because they are "anonymous". There is no Wikipedia policy which supports this treatment, and there are several long-term and constructive Wikipedia editors who edit solely under a fixed IP address.

The treatment of IP address editors as second-class editors is counter to Wikipedia policy and the spirit of anyone-can-edit collaboration.

• Wikipedia:IPs are human too
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is anonymous
• Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing