Comment by yegle
11 hours ago
One thing to note: OSM edits are associated with your account. Do not use your regular user name, or people can easily identify where you live since people tends to edit nearby locations.
If you accidentally did that, I believe there's a way for the admin to scrub that for you.
I'm not too concerned about my place of residence, since the state already publishes my full address online. But OSM edit history also shows the various places you visit, with timestamps too. I still haven't decided if I want to do something about that or not. It's certainly something new contributors should be aware of.
There are much easier ways to identify the approximate neighborhood where most people live.
You can define a location of your choice in your profile for example.