A new website built by an American technology student has uncovered the lengths that companies apparently go to improve their public image by tweaking their entries on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that - famously - “anyone can edit”.
The WikiScanner site, developed by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, reveals changes to the online encyclopaedia by linking edits back to the computers from which they emanate using each computer’s unique IP address.
Mr Griffith, 24, says he created the site "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organisations I dislike" - a mission he may well have succeeded in.
Among those he alleges have been updating their entries are Wal-Mart, the world’s largest grocer, AstraZeneca, the drugs giant, Britain's Labour Party, the CIA and the Vatican.
In one example he gives, a computer linked to an IP address registered to the Dow Chemical company is seen to have deleted a passage on the Bhopal chemical disaster of 1984, which occurred at a plant operated by Union Carbide, now a wholly-owned Dow subsidiary.
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Exposed: guess who has been polishing their Wikipedia entries?
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