On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 2:35 PM, Jibix <ji...@protonmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone, > I've been a contributor of OpenStreetMap for a few year, with a couple of > different accounts. I got them deleted today and I though it could be > worthwhile talking about this here. > > In our current era of big data, I have been more and more concerned about > having all my osm edits publicly linked to my profiles, and these profiles > publicly listing all these positions and places where I've been, also with > somehow time information and sometimes comments, etc... visible forever by > anyone, or any bot. I've looked into making the link between all that data > not publicly visible, but it seems the functionality there use to be for > that (anonymous editing) is not possible since 2007/2009. > > Therefore I'm afraid the only way forward I see to address my concerns is > the following: > 1) on the one hand having my past accounts deleted, for the corresponding > change-sets not to be linked any more to my name or pseudonym. I got that > done today. > 2) on the other hand, from now on, to periodically create and abandon > accounts for keeping editing without a massive correlation of data being > too easily possible (but even like that it's an unperfect tradeoff). >
If you did not know, not only is there a user name/pseudonym/profile name but it is linked to an internal number. The internal number is just a sequence number that really holds the database together. More than likely, the account deletion was nothing more than changing your username. Start with a fresh account. Pick some name that you would never user or take the internal number and add user_ in front of the number. Then tell no one what you have done. Map away. Map in another area of the world so that no one can make a relationship between the old you and the new you. The database needs that internal number to keep the nodes, ways, and relations glued together. Otherwise, I think all your plans will not provide you the privacy that you think that they will. Regards, Greg
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