WMFOffice makes questionable image deletion

[Giraffe Stapler]

The WMF Office account (the one associated with the Trust & Safety and Legal departments) has announced that they have deleted an image of a check/cheque. This was explicitly not a DMCA takedown.

Notice of office action on File:Cheque BanBajío.jpg
Hello Commons folks - this is a note to let you all know that we have removed the file File:Cheque BanBajío.jpg from Wikimedia Commons for security reasons. Office actions like these are rare and typically limited on Commons to DMCA takedowns, however in this case we had credible outreach that this image presented a fraud risk. We note that we were contacted specifically regarding this image being used for fraud, the Foundation legal team does not believe that redacted images of checks create a fraud risk in normal circumstances if no personal information is visible. As with all office actions, we ask that this action not be undone. If you have further questions, please address them to T&S (ca@wikimedia.org). Thank you! -- Wikimedia Foundation office (talk) 18:49, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems like Trust & Safety may have stepped over a line here. It does not appear that they were compelled to do this for legal reasons (i.e. to comply with DMCA provisions). They don't specify who told them but I think they would have been less vague if it was the bank itself.

Fae quite reasonably asks why this is an office action and not something that the oversight team could do.

The itself action seems understandable and obvious, however, it's weird that nobody thought to quickly talk to any volunteers in COM:Oversight, who do this sort of thing all the time and would avoid the WMF providing evidence that may at some point in the future be presented in court that the WMF provides active editorial oversite of content. I fail to understand how that's in the interests of the WMF or in the interests of the volunteer community. --Fæ (talk) 19:07, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

WMF has asked the Oversighters if it would be possible to oversight the file. But I declined oversigthing because none of the four cases were given: Neither "Removal of non-public personal information", "Removal of potentially libelous information", "Removal of copyright violations" nor "Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs ...". Raymond 19:28, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

So someone from the WMF asked for the file to be oversighted and their request was declined because it didn't meet any of the criteria for oversighting. So the WMFOffice account did it. I don't think many people at the WMF can make that happen.

This is very very very unusual. It raises Section 230 questions. And why just this particular image? Why not all check/cheque images? What is the fraud risk in a redacted check/cheque image?

[Midsize Jake]

This is very very very unusual. It raises Section 230 questions. And why just this particular image? Why not all check/cheque images? What is the fraud risk in a redacted check/cheque image?

It won't be long before this is out of the Google Images cache, but I just checked and it was still there. Someone had already blacked out the account and routing numbers, but other than that, it looks/looked lie a fairly ordinary blank check.

I wonder if it had something to do with the sheer size of the image? Obviously 7860 x 3264 pixels is way more than necessary for an encyclopedia-like web page/article. Maybe it's hi-rez enough to produce a really good forgery, though.

[Poetlister]

The identical image is here, though it has low resolution. Presumably it can be found elsewhere on the Internet.

[Beeblebrox]

Life will be easier if you just accept now that the office is never going to say exactly why they did this or exactly who asked them to do so.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Life will be easier if you just accept now that the office is never going to say exactly why they did this or exactly who asked them to do so.

Do you really think I expect to get answers?

[Giraffe Stapler]

Ok, so this just gets stupider the more I look into it. The file was uploaded in 2013. In 2015, an IP editor nominated it for deletion because "compromise the security of documents". It was not deleted.

So that file has been on Commons for the better part of 10 years. In that time, Banco del Bajio appears to have changed the design of their checks/cheques to use their BanBajio branding. It's a scan of a check/cheque (that has been out of date for years) with some information blacked out. It's not where I'd start if I were a check/cheque forger.

[Anroth]

So that file has been on Commons for the better part of 10 years. In that time, Banco del Bajio appears to have changed the design of their checks/cheques to use their BanBajio branding. It's a scan of a check/cheque (that has been out of date for years) with some information blacked out. It's not where I'd start if I were a check/cheque forger.

One of the odd things you find out if you ever work in finance fraud, is that imperfect copies tend to slip past the clerk/teller controls way more often than perfect replicas. There is probably a study somewhere on why. But I dont find it implausible in the least that someone would have been using that old and high-res picture in cheque fraud. Give it to a 60 year old criminal, claim they havnt had a chequebook refresh (because they are old) and watch everyone fall over to cash it for them. That's not even uncommon for bank fraud depts to deal with.

[Poetlister]

One of the odd things you find out if you ever work in finance fraud, is that imperfect copies tend to slip past the clerk/teller controls way more often than perfect replicas.

Maybe the great majority of copies are imperfect, or maybe many of the perfect ones are never discovered to be forgeries.

[Boing! said Zebedee]

Why would anyone need to print a fake check from a photo on Wikipedia when there are millions of real ones out there to copy?

[Giraffe Stapler]

So that file has been on Commons for the better part of 10 years. In that time, Banco del Bajio appears to have changed the design of their checks/cheques to use their BanBajio branding. It's a scan of a check/cheque (that has been out of date for years) with some information blacked out. It's not where I'd start if I were a check/cheque forger.

One of the odd things you find out if you ever work in finance fraud, is that imperfect copies tend to slip past the clerk/teller controls way more often than perfect replicas. There is probably a study somewhere on why. But I dont find it implausible in the least that someone would have been using that old and high-res picture in cheque fraud. Give it to a 60 year old criminal, claim they havnt had a chequebook refresh (because they are old) and watch everyone fall over to cash it for them. That's not even uncommon for bank fraud depts to deal with.

Yeah, I wanted to say that no one would be fooled by this, but I know that someone, somewhere, might be. Even with a blank back and no UV watermarks.

Assuming that the WMF wants to mitigate this risk, isn't the more sensible course of action to replace the image with a lower resolution copy or add "SPECIMEN" or "VOID" over top? Deleting a file, especially after one unsuccessful deletion attempt and one refusal by oversight, seems like a line has been crossed.

[Vigilant]

Why would the WMF explain themselves when they can be opaque and unfriendly?

[Poetlister]

Assuming that the WMF wants to mitigate this risk, isn't the more sensible course of action to replace the image with a lower resolution copy or add "SPECIMEN" or "VOID" over top? Deleting a file, especially after one unsuccessful deletion attempt and one refusal by oversight, seems like a line has been crossed.

It's not every day that "the WMF" and "the more sensible course of action" appear in the same sentence!

[Anroth]

One of the odd things you find out if you ever work in finance fraud, is that imperfect copies tend to slip past the clerk/teller controls way more often than perfect replicas.

Maybe the great majority of copies are imperfect, or maybe many of the perfect ones are never discovered to be forgeries.

Its a first pass thing. 'Perfect' copies get picked up more when the cheque is presented more often than imperfect ones, which get picked up later in the process as the cheque works its way through the system.

[Ming]

Ignoring the WMF's high-handedness, what is the actual loss here? Yes, potentially they could come along later and delete something that really matters, which will probably be unimportant in the end, because if the image were important, people will make copies. Is this image of any real importance in its own right? No. None whatsoever.

[CoffeeCrumbs]

"Ignoring that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

The high-handedness *is* the point.

[Poetlister]

"Ignoring that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

The high-handedness *is* the point.

Poetlister thinks that Ming is arguing that while the WMF should not behave like that, it makes little difference in this particular case. Ming may well be right. The danger is that next time it might make a significant difference.