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I opened up the Wikipedia app on my iPhone today and saw that the featured article on the main page was on “Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor”. However, the image displayed for the article was a closeup picture of male genitalia. I was shocked and, though, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have, clicked on the article. Just to be sure, I checked the page and no such image appeared.

Going back to the main page, I saw that the image was now a picture of Henry IV. I’ve closed and reloaded the app but have been unable to reproduce the behavior.

Obviously, something malicious is going on. What is my best course of action at this point? Is it a reasonable possibility that my phone itself has been compromised (if so, what can I do about it?)? Should I contact Apple or Wikipedia?

Daniel Walker
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1 Answers1

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It's not malware. It's what wikipedians call vandalism.

You can see the revision you saw here, complete with the image you describe. It was up for about three minutes.

At this point, you should ignore it. If you come across vandalism in wikipedia in the future, you can report it, or simply fix it, by rolling back to the appropriate revision.

vidarlo
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