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[Curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Brief Primer on Launchpad Privacy
===================================

This is a late edition to the privacy discussion that was discovered by
Brad and myself as were talking about why the 'private-' name prefix is
ignored 66% of the time. This number was abut 80% recently and the
change in percentage started a conversation about the change in
behaviour.


Registering Private Teams Now
-----------------------------

Private teams are prefixed with 'private-' in their name to prevent
users from deducing the existence of the team through registration. Team
names may contain company names that are a great liability to leak.
The private namespace is blacklisted, the user must ask an admin or
commercial admin to register the team.

But users are not registering private-prefixed teams; how could they?
Only a commercial-admin/admin can do that? Most teams are created by a
user. The user realises the team is public, then asks someone to make it
private. The admin does make the team private, but does not rename the
team to have the private-prefix.

This lack of process to create a private primary context will become a
greater problem when users need to create private projects, project
groups, and distros


Registering Private Contexts
----------------------------

When a user registers a primary context he or she can see and select the
private visibility option. The user will be prompted to confirm this
decision and explain that an admin will review the request.

The same behaviour could happen when a user chooses the
Other/Proprietary license option. The form does reveal a paragraph that
explains that a commercial subscription is required, but most users
ignore it. The project is disabled a 2 weeks later after the user has
not changed the license or purchased a commercial subscription.

The registrant needs to understand that private or proprietary primary
context requires a commercial subscription that can be purchased.
(Canonical and Partner projects are provided commercial subscriptions by
the commercial admins team.)

The private-prefix is not added to the primary context until it is
approved. This ensures that users cannot use registration to discover
the name of a private project. The private-prefix is black listed. Only
admin and commercial admins are exempt from the blacklist restriction.

[Should Registry Admins be permitted to do this since they have naming
responsibilities already.]

[Should there be a hard and soft black list? Those names that can never
be used and those that responsible admins can use?]

[Is the primary context in a limbo state when it is not approved? In
this state the registrant and reviewers can see it, but it cannot be
used. Approving the private state renames the primary context and makes
it usable. If the private state is rejected, is it disabled or just made
public?]

-- 
__Curtis C. Hovey_________
http://launchpad.net/

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