How can contributors affected by violence maintain secrecy of whereabouts but still contribute to local mapping?

Help and support
1

Hello.
It looks like OpenStreetMap permitted anonymous edits a very long time ago, but not since then. I’d like to contribute here in the United States where a lot of work needs to be done it seems, but I’m a domestic violence victim and a participant in my state’s address confidentiality program. I’m concerned that making public edits would make it easier for my abuser to find the region I’m in.
From a preliminary skim of the account settings page, it looks like the only mandatory information is an email address and a display name. I guess the display name can be whatever I want (probably?), so should I just find some kind of email relay service and be good to go?
Thanks

2

Depending on risks: note that edits are public, so if someone would be able to track down account they know which edits you made.

If someone edits while surveying it effectively publishes their current location.

For some, even publishing past locations (say, updating location visited on holidays after returning home) may be too dangerous.

In extreme cases even mapping only remotely, based on aerial imagery, not places that someone visited, may be too risky.

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3

Yes, you can set your OSM user name to anything and change it at any time. But it probably isn’t a good idea to edit in your local area if you’ve ever used your current user name in the past. If you need to edit around your local area, create a second account and keep the two accounts separate. Also, in your profile, make sure you leave your home location blank or set it to something fictitious. Otherwise, someone who creates an account and sets their home location nearby will see you in the “nearby users” part of the user dashboard.

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4

Some hints:
You should not make your first edits in your hometown or in places you have a personal connection to. Use separate OSM accounts for your surroundings, your work, and your vacations. Avoid live edits using apps directly on site. Also edit regions that you don’t know, for example with Mapillary, Bing Streetside, KartaView or Mapilio to confuse potential trackers.

5

Please be aware of https://hdyc.neis-one.org/ and https://yosmhm.neis-one.org/. These are great tools, don’t get me wrong. But they allow you to get a quick and accurate picture of where someone is mapping.

6

You can change it, but it does not change your user id number and there are tools that can be used to show past usernames for a given id.

You’re probably better off creating different accounts for different areas and getting something to randomly generate the names for you (as a courtesy to other mappers please make them memorable/typable).

All the email addresses you use should be usable to contact you though. If there is a problem with an edit and people can’t get in touch then you may end up getting that account’s contributions reverted.

I don’t know that I can say what’s a “safe” way of mapping if someone might be trying to track you down. If they know you like to map and you are in a region that’s particularly undermapped even a heatmap might be enough to narrow things down.

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