What you're agreeing to
Wikipedia's Terms of Use ask you not to harass other editors, not to post copyrighted material without permission, and not to manipulate articles for pay. No account is required to read or edit most articles. Content you contribute is licensed under Creative Commons and becomes permanently public.
Privacy in plain English
Wikipedia collects your IP address when you edit without an account and your username and edit history when you have one. No behavioral advertising is run on Wikipedia. Wikimedia does not sell user data and operates as a nonprofit funded entirely by donations.
Terms of Service: Breakdown
This means Wikipedia's terms are designed to protect the encyclopedia, not to extract value from users.
Key Clauses- Content license: anything you write or edit on Wikipedia is permanently licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA, meaning anyone can reuse it. Your contributions cannot be taken back.
- Paid editing prohibition: writing Wikipedia articles for money without disclosure is prohibited and accounts doing so are banned.
- No warranty: Wikipedia is provided as-is. The Wikimedia Foundation is not liable for inaccurate information or content changes made by other editors.
- none for advertising purposes. Basic server logs may be retained for security.
Privacy Policy: Breakdown
This means if you are not logged in, the only thing Wikipedia knows about you is your IP address. No red flags were identified. Logged-out browsing is entirely anonymous. Logged-in browsing reveals only your username and edit history, both of which are already public by design. Wikipedia does not run advertising and has no financial incentive to collect behavioral data. Third-party sharing: Wikimedia shares anonymized, aggregated traffic data with research partners only. No user-level data is sold. Privacy advocate verdict: reading Wikipedia is the closest thing to a fully private internet activity that a mainstream website offers.
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