Diebold Inc. has confirmed that someone used a computer at its offices to delete sections about its election systems unit in the Wikipedia entry on the North Canton, Ohio, automated teller machine company.
Mike Jacobsen, a spokesman for Diebold, said in an interview Thursday that the changes "came from our IP address, and that's all we know." Related Link
Wikipedia entries often are created and edited anonymously, but the work leaves behind digital tracks.
Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, used this data to create
Mr. Griffith's site finds examples of companies and other groups that have tried to clean up their image on Wikipedia. Exxon Mobil Corp., the Church of Scientology, and the National Rifle Association are some of the many entities that the site determined had edited their entries.
In an e-mail, Mr. Griffith wrote that he cannot say for certain that the changes to Diebold's entry were made by a Diebold employee.
"Technically, we don't know whether it came from an agent of that company," he wrote. "However, we do know that the edit came from someone with access to their network."
Most of the sections of the Diebold entery that were deleted eventually were returned to the entry, Mr. Griffith noted.
According to Mr. Jacobsen, 2,000 Diebold employees have access to its IP server. "It could have been anybody," he said.
"The nature of Wikipedia allows anybody to freely contribute to any entry out there," he said. "As a company, we have a tough time legislating that."
