Forum:Something odd at a ShoutWiki wiki.

Hello all,

Yes this is about a ShoutWiki wiki, so perhaps this is not the best place to discuss it, but Wiki's are Wiki's and they all kinda work the same.

Anyway, this morning I received two e-mails from ShoutWiki ("MediaWiki Mail"), on the wiki WikiGardener there was a page created called "User talk:Zantam03" by 216.66.154.200. Two hours later I received another e-mail which said the same, but this time it was created by a certain User:Lynton.

I find this strange for four reasons:
 * 1) I don't know that Wiki and I've never been there.
 * 2) Thus I never registered/logged in on that Wiki.
 * 3) Why would someone create a page called "User talk:Zantam03"?
 * 4) Why on earth was I e-mailed about this? How is it possible I get automatically mailed by a Wiki I've never heard of before??

Is this dubious or what? Also, User:Lynton deleted his own talkpage shortly after I received that automatic e-mail. Its just so strange that for some reason my e-mail (how can he know my e-mail?) is registered on that wiki.

Well... I'll probably have to head over to SW to solve this, but just wanted to post this here. --- Zantam03 ( Talk ) 16:30, March 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Was the ShoutWiki moved from Wikia? There were a lot of wikis that moved from Wikia when Oasis came out, that brought along all the users, pages, etc, and that includes User talks. Cat 16:37, March 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmm, good point... still don't recall visiting any gardening Wiki. --- Zantam03 ( Talk ) 16:46, March 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, looking at the Recent Activity on that Wiki it shows my page wasn't the only one that was deleted. Loads of edits by 216.66.154.200 were reverted today. --- Zantam03 ( Talk ) 16:49, March 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Very odd - I don't think database dumps from Wikia contain email info on users, does anyone know? --  Random Time  16:56, March 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * From what I've heard, mw:Extension:MediaWikiAuth &mdash; the extension used to import wikis to ShoutWiki &mdash; does contain the email. 1358  (Talk)  19:21, March 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know why someone would create the page, but I think MediaWiki e-mails you when someone messages you (and the "creation" of a talk page may be a message) on your talk on any wiki, even if you've never been to it before; as long as it's your talk page. 09:46, March 4, 2012 (UTC)
 * And yes, what might happen is that even if you haven't registered on shoutwiki, you still get a notification from MediaWiki because the account name is the same as yours and MW recognises that. I'm not sure if any of the above is correct, but that's my only theory. 09:50, March 4, 2012 (UTC)
 * I remember, when we first got Oasis and the wikis moved, being able to login on the ShoutWiki version of Casualty Wiki quite easily by resetting my Wikia password. Dunno quite how it worked, but I suspect there was some user profile importing involved.


 * RandomTime is correct, we don't give out email addresses in any form, including dumps, due to its privacy implications (and frankly, simple common sense). We are investigating what is behind Zantam's emails if you, Zantam, could forward them to Special:Contact. --daNASCAT http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png (help forum | blog) 21:38, March 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, wanted to follow up on this. Without being familiar with ShoutWiki's setup (and plus the fact they are offline again), I have no way to state with absolutely certainty that we understand how Zantam03 ended up getting a watchlist from that wiki. However, we do think in fact it resulted from Xd1358's post mw:Extension:MediaWikiAuth.
 * I reviewed this extension with a few engineers and while we did not feel as though there was a security hole, we agreed that its use of a "silent" proxy browser as well as lack of safeguards to prevent abuse certainly indicated a great privacy concern to any Wikia user who also happened to either - on purpose or accidentally - sign up for a ShoutWiki wiki.
 * As such, our engineers have made a change to our API that will prevent that extension from being able to access Wikia. This will effectively block any user preferences being "transferred" over without the owner's consent, which is what the current configuration of that extension does. --daNASCAT http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png (help forum | blog) 23:51, March 12, 2012 (UTC)