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A few days ago, I received an e-mail from Wikipedia that said: "Login to Wikipedia as you from a computer you have not recently used." Initially, I ignored the message, but after next few days, I got few more such messages. I changed my Wikipedia password after that.

However, the intruder is still trying to login to my account and failing each time. He tried around 30 times after I changed the password. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not tell me anything about the intruder, including IP address, country or anything else.

Now, I want to locate this person. What can I do? Does Wikipedia provide the information on request? Does another way exist if this is not possible? Why could they be trying again and again even after failing? What could be the aim since they haven't edited anything? Can it be a virus and not a real human?

Any help is highly appreciated.

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  • If you locate this person somehow, and can prove it is them, what do you hope to do with this information?
    – baldPrussian
    Commented Dec 10, 2017 at 18:36
  • I will stop trusting the person if I know them. It is crucial for me to know whom I can trust.
    – Peaceful
    Commented Dec 11, 2017 at 4:18
  • Escalate to Wikipedia. Even without your contact, they'll hopefully recognize the persistent attacks and perhaps do something about it (especially if they aren't the only attempts). Perhaps posting a notice to the top of your Wikipedia user page would help you talk with the attacker?
    – Adam Katz
    Commented Dec 13, 2017 at 16:56

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Without identifying information such as an IP and/or http-agent information, you will not identify that person.

And even if you had that information, it would be highly unlikely to actually trace back the human originally responsible for those actions, and for a few reasons:

  • VPN and/or
  • infected jump hosts serving as a proxy chain and/or
  • TOR.

Additionally, this seems more like your username and password combination (possibly alongside the information that there is a Wikipedia account for those) has been compromised and possibly checked for validity for black market trading purposes.

You should check if your account has been used to modify any Wikipedia entries and change all accounts’ passwords where these credentials have been reused.

Other than that, you might hand this over to law enforcement if this is representing a crime in your jurisdiction - but they will face similar problems to those outlined above.

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