Wikipedia:Temporary accounts
 | This is an information page. It is neither an encyclopedia article nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Logged-out editors are now identified by a temporary account such as ~2026-31281-48 instead of their IP address. Some editors can still see IP addresses of temporary accounts. |
Temporary accounts are automatically assigned to unregistered editors. They replace the practice of identifying unregistered editors by their IP addresses (IPs for short), which are no longer exposed publicly for their privacy and security. The transition to temporary accounts helps editors avoid political persecution in territories with animus toward the English Wikipedia while additionally providing a layer of prevention hindering denial-of-service attacks against editors.
The accounts have the effect of obscuring the connection of unregistered editors to their IPs to casual viewers. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users in the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user group, are able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.
They were enabled on English Wikipedia on November 4, 2025. Before this, unregistered users were often referred to as "anonymous" or "IP" (IP address) editors. Whenever you see a reference to "anons" or "IP edits", this is talking about what are now "TA edits", edits made using a temporary account.