Comments are visible to anonymous users.
Asked by John M:

We have only one space in the Confluence instance and it is visible to anonymous users. All inline comments on its pages are also visible to anonymous users. Is there a way to hide comments from anonymous users? Here's how the space level permissions look currently for anonymous users.

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/118549i5800B69FF2B25B04/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")


Answers:
author: Felix Bauer
body: Here is a connected JIRA ticket for that feature:

<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-38697>  
<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-5639>

Vote there!  

I have to say that this is very annoying for us. We use confluence as an tool for documentation and provide anonymous access.  
Comments are also very useful for reviews and team-internal improvement suggestions.   

The fact that confluence can not hide those comments might be a reason why we will look out for an alternative system soon...

comments: author: Bill Bailey
body: Yet another reason, I cannot see moving to the Cloud anytime in the near future. Add this to many of the missing features in the Cloud version versus server.


author: Ture Hoefner
body: The company I work for has released a new version of our [MultiExcerpt](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/169/multiexcerpt?hosting=datacenter&tab=overview "MultiExcerpt") plugin that adds the capability for admins to disable anonymous viewing of inline comments for their site: [MultiExcerpt 5.5.0 - Release Notes](https://artemis.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SUP/pages/1584693307/MultiExcerpt+5.5.0 "MultiExcerpt 5.5.0 - Release Notes")

The main focus of that release is to allow inline comments to be rendered in INCLUDED content (with the MultiExcerpt Include and [Excerpt Include)](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/excerpt-include-macro-148067.html "Excerpt Include"). Confluence does not render inline comments in included content by default.

However, toggling for visibility of anonymous viewing of inline comments on a site was added in response to user feedback.

Now that inline comments can be rendered in included content it is even more obvious that it is difficult/impossible to hide inline comments from anonymous users on pages that they can view.


author: Bill Bailey
body: Can you take a screenshot of the permission set (at the space level) for anon users? Generally, you should only have View selected.

comments: author: John M
body: Thanks! I've added a screenshot above.


author: Bill Bailey
body: The settings look correct. Have you tried viewing the pages from a different browser that is not logged into your Confluence instance (with caches cleared) to be sure what an anon user actually sees?


author: John M
body: I use Chrome, so I just used Incognito mode on it. However, let me try Firefox now.


author: John M
body: It's the same problem. Here's what I tried:

1. I made a test inline comment on a page using Chrome.
2. I opened the same page on Firefox. It is not signed in. (See red arrow in screenshot below.)
3. I can see the commented part highlighted in yellow and on clicking the text, it reveals the comment.
4. Also, the **Show inline comments** button is available. (See purple arrow in the screenshot below.)

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/118555i64FC8640C65463E6/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")


author: Bill Bailey
body: I would file a bug report with Atlassian. Doesn't seem consistent with the permissions. I tried searching for any bug reports, but did not see any.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud