Anonymizing users
You can anonymize users in Jira to hide or delete any data that can identify them. Anonymization helps you stay compliant with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the “right to be forgotten,” and is most often needed when somebody is leaving your organization and requests to have their personal data erased.
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Compatible applications
When anonymizing users, we’ll change or erase their personal data in: Jira Core, Jira Software, Jira Service Desk, and Portfolio for Jira.
What does the anonymization involve?
Every user in Jira is associated with some items—they might have an issue assigned, be referenced in permission schemes, or mentioned in comments by their teammates. Some pieces of user data are anonymized, while others are completely erased. We’ll list all of them below and in Jira when you start anonymizing a user.
The two main things to understand for anonymized users are how we treat their:
Username: Changed into an anonymous, unrecognizable alias, like jirauser80900.
User profile: Completely anonymized and looks like a new user profile. The full name, which is often displayed around Jira, is given an anonymous alias. For example, user-ca31a.
Here’s an example of a user Friendly Robot (username: friendlyrobot) who has been anonymized and is now user-ca31a (username: jirauser80900).
Example | Before | After |
---|---|---|
Issue reporter | ||
Comment | ||
User profile |
Anonymizing a user
You need to be a Jira administrator to complete all of these tasks.
You can anonymize users in two ways. The method you use depends on whether the user is still active, or has been deleted.
Active users:
- Go to Administration > User management > Users.
- Find the user you want to anonymize, and select ... > Anonymize user.
Deleted users:
- Go to Administration > User management > Anonymization.
- Enter the username, and select Anonymize. When anonymizing users that have been deleted, you'll see a DELETED label next to their username.
Whichever option you choose, you will be redirected to a separate Anonymize user page that shows details about the chosen user and lists all associated items that will be transferred, anonymized, or deleted. Your user won’t be anonymized yet, so feel free to try it.
Understanding the scope of anonymization
Identify changes: You can click this button to search Jira for any items associated with a user and have them displayed here. This is optional, we will anonymize all of these items even if you don’t view them. You can see the complete list of items below.
Transferring ownership: Some items owned by a user, like Project Lead or Component Lead, might break things if left without the owner. You’ll need to select a new owner here, and we’ll transfer the items for you. This section won’t be displayed if there’s nothing to transfer.
What's about to change
If you choose to display items associated with a user, they will typically be displayed in four sections:
- Transferred items
- Anonymized items
- Deleted items
- Actions required on your side.
If Jira doesn’t find the user’s data in any of the sections, they won’t display at all. In that case, what you see may differ slightly from these examples.
1. Transferred items
Some items won’t work properly with inactive users, so you’ll need to choose a new owner for these items. For example, an inactive Component Lead might break the Default assignee option. You can choose any user with proper permissions, but it’s probably best to transfer them to a project admin or somebody who has taken over the tasks of the anonymized user.
2. Anonymized items
Anonymized data includes items with any occurrences of the user’s name or username. As mentioned earlier, we’ll change these occurrences into an anonymous alias generated specifically for this user. The items themselves need to remain in Jira as they affect other areas or users — these are usually comments, work logs, workflows, and so on.
3. Deleted items
These items are specific to a user and don’t affect anybody else, so there’s no point in keeping them in Jira. These can be associations in various schemes (don’t worry, we won’t delete the schemes), personal filter subscriptions, or personal roles — the ones used only by this user. Once you anonymize the user, these will be gone forever.
4. Actions required on your side
Finally, there are items which we can’t anonymize, and you’ll need to change them manually. This section lists various items that include JQL queries with user’s personal data or data stored in 3rd party apps.
Limitations
Because of these limitations, some personal data will not be anonymized. You can already anonymize your users, and then complete anonymizing the missing data once we release the fixes. To complete anonymizing these items later, you’ll need to retry the anonymization, which will anonymize only items that haven’t been anonymized before.
Previous limitations, already fixed:
Troubleshooting
If anonymization fails, user data may be partially anonymized. If you encounter this problem, you can use the audit log to find the partially anonymized user, and retry their anonymization.
For more info, see Retrying anonymization.
Known issues
Here are some known issues:
REST APIs
You can also anonymize your users by using the REST API.
For more info, see Anonymization REST API.
For app developers
If you’re an app developer, we have created extension points that will inform your app when an admin anonymizes a user in their Jira instance. This lets you take the appropriate steps to anonymize any user data stored in your app.
For more info, see Developer docs: Anonymizing users.