Reverting undiscussed Lantmäteriet import

(cross-post with mailing list)

Hi,

over the last couple of weeks, over 90.000 changesets have been made by 45 different accounts, performing an undiscussed, low-quality Lantmäteriet import (many small bits of tracks or minor roads, unconnected to each other and the rest of the network). Several members of the Swedish OSM community have made the DWG aware of this issue.

The worst thing about this is that many of the accounts used have been hacked - they are accounts of people normally editing elsewhere on the planet, with different editors, in different languages, and certainly not importing Lantmäteriet.

Not only is this a slap in the face for all of our hard working volunteers trying to make the best map in Sweden; it is also a crass violation of trust (and very likely also a violation of Swedish law).

We (at DWG) are still investigating who is behind this. This is more than just the usual bad import, this is someone who has enough criminal energy to hack into other accounts in an attempt to fly under the radar.

We have blocked the accounts involved (a list of accounts we have identified is below). If you know anything that might help us determine the identity of this hacker, please let us know at data@osmfoundation.org.

We’re planning to revert the import in the coming days.

Bye
Frederik

List of accounts identified (remember, many of these will be innocent users that had their account hacked):

30d4f4e1ccf24
Anggele
Beckster55
Daly Riandi
Gary18
IsabelenEvelyn
Lana Villa
Nicolas59380
Projekt-rolli
RobertKluijver
Ryan Seid
SLC
Sivia1811
TTSS
ViktorPurtin1
Yesbolaga
underscore
ahateam
ankon
annedukh
arraggonn
barbara61
couch-potato
dbmercer
dmitmia
estrellaoruro
faithace
flyup2000
franz0078
hako0215
jeppe2011
jojoAdventure
jona0918
kamilpost
mapeditorkepno
rohweder
thageboelling
tomas471
tomto00001
tonypepe
ulaB
ussifonyll-39
uwasescott
voodoobaby
xcvb
xerxes76


Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik@remote.org ## N49°00’09" E008°23’33"

hej Fredrik,
as much as i understand the problem will all reverting destroy much of work. I have worked hard on comparing our map with lantmäteriets map and have tried to figure out missing roads. This is how i remarked the stupid imports and have tried to discuss it with the community.

I hope that you have verry strong reasons why an complete revert is nessesary. And if you have any idears how to protect the work done of other mappers i think it is good to be extra careful.

The stupid think about this import is that it is normaly meaningsful. The huge majority of ways is connected to the rest of the network - but curiosly not all. And i do not see any structure.

I got the impression that who ever is doing this is focusing on rural areas that are verry badly mapped. Furtermore the quality is not as good as possible men normaly better than manual tracing from years ago. We didn´t have had good quality pictures.

From my point of view it is manly organisational / formal reasons that motivate an reset of the changes.

Is it somehow possible to collect the illegal importet work in a file and import it directly back in a leagal way? Or repair just the organisational problem that we can not tolerate hacked accounts by collecting them in one “import” account and making this “leagal”.

I don’t agree with Skinfaxi. The quality is not the issue. The issue is the method. Also, I haven’t checked, but if the ways don’t connect with each other the import is meaningless and should be reverted. It might look good at a glance but can’t be used data-wise.

o

I do not see a big difference.

My intention is just to find a method of “reverting” that doesn´t do more damages and nessary. I do not know exactly what a revert is doing. But just deleting the objekts makes more trouble.

Thats why i think: Not wether it should be repaired or not is the question. Just the method how.

This is why i suggest a revert with a methode som for exemple does reimport the ways directly after deleting them och just change the “ownership” of the imported ways.

I have now idear how the map will look like after the “revert”. but for me its seems to be a verry stupid result if the ways are just gone. Maybe we can att least protect the ways that was change after the imports. I have used hours to fix osmose problems like unconnected ways. And if you delete now a way in the middle of my work just because it has the wrong orgin it will cause new problems.

Maybe we find a way to point out the ways that are selected for deletion (reverting) and give useres as me the change to “overtake” ways with are part of a network.

And i do not understand completly what the revert will have for efforts. In summertime a lot of small village was imported to the map. If I had worked with such an object (the most needed fixed position) - will my work simply be deleted because the “orgin” av the original point is the problem?

At least for those objects that anybody has worked with (or done work nearby) should be protected…

Ist this now completed?

I