How do I manage anonymous access in Confluence?
Asked by Klaus-Dieter Schulz:

When enabling anonymous access first globally and then for a selected space only, users can still navigate to our internal pages using the "Spaces" menu, which needs to be avoided.


Answers:
author: Srinatha T
body: Hi [@Klaus-Dieter Schulz](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4764763) ,

Welcome to Atlassian community.

If anonymous users are granted access to the space, they'll have access to **all content within the space** . To restrict them from a page, you can either [change its page restrictions](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/add-or-remove-page-restrictions/) or [hide it from the page tree](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/move-copy-and-hide-pages/).

Space administrators must grant anonymous users permissions on a space by space basis. I would recommend you to go through below KB.

* [make-a-space-public](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/make-a-space-public-829076202.html)

I hope above information helps. Have a good day!

Thanks,

Srinath T

comments: author: Klaus-Dieter Schulz
body: Dear Srinatha,

thanks very much for your response. I believe I have gone through the steps mentioned in the KB (I do have site administrative privileges). Everything works okay for the space we want to publish; the problem is that anonymous users can navigate to other spaces using the "Spaces" menu. ![spaces.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/190298i3DED08AF2DEAE70A/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "spaces.PNG")

(Cf. screenshot inserted, "DEV knowledge", for example, should not be accessible.) This happens although anonymous access remains disabled for those spaces. I need to find a way to stop this and protect our internal information.

P.S. I tried to raise a support ticket but keep getting the "Something went wrong" message.

Yours sincerely,

K.D. Schulz


author: Srinatha T
body: [@Klaus-Dieter Schulz](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4764763) ,

I will have to play with the anonymous setup to understand this better. When you check as anonymous user , I understand spaces are visible but when you click on that what happens ??


author: Klaus-Dieter Schulz
body: Dear Srinatha,

the problem is that a user is able to access and browse **++any++**space, although all spaces, with the exception of "User Documentation", have anonymous access disabled. For example, after clicking "DEV knowledge" from the Spaces (German "Bereiche") menu, an anonymous user will be able to enter that space and see (if not edit) all the pages therein. I guess the issue would be resolved, at least in part, if there was a way of hiding the Spaces menu.

Many thanks,

Klaus


author: Ravi Dixit
body: Hello,

First of all anonymous users are the ones who cannot login to Confluence. Now, when you said "user is able to access and browse **++any++** space" do you mean anonymous users here ?

When you have anonymous access enabled on the global permission page and at the space level you disable it then ideally anonymous users would not be able to access the space.


author: Klaus-Dieter Schulz
body: Dear Ravi,

Thanks for your reply. - Yes, I was talking about anonymous users. To clarify, anonymous access is enabled globally but disabled for all but one space. However, the Spaces menu enables anonymous users to navigate to other spaces also. The company wishes to publish the "User Documentation" space but obviously this cannot happen unless we are confident that our R\&D pages are kept hidden. It's a serious issue because online access to the documentation is a customer expectation. (I still find myself unable to raise a support ticket because each time I submit I run into the "Something went wrong" thing.)

Cheers,

Klaus


author: Klaus-Dieter Schulz
body: Following consultation with our network admin, apparently part of the problem was hidden (invisible to me) access privileges of one of our spaces. The issue appears resolved now but I am still irritated that it should prove persistently impossible to raise a support ticket (see above chat). It is/was clearly an issue that needed to be addressed by Atlassian staff rather than the community.

K.D. Schulz

comments: author: Srinatha T
body: Hi [@Klaus-Dieter Schulz](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4764763) ,

Sorry to hear that you have problem raising case. What exactly is the issue you have ? I will check if i can connect you to some one who can help fix it .

Thanks,

Srinath T


author: Klaus-Dieter Schulz
body: Again, it seems okay now but I maintain the issue should have been dealt with by submitting and processing a support ticket, which seemed impossible during two consecutive working days.

Thanks

K.D. Schulz


author: Srinatha T
body: [@Klaus-Dieter Schulz](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4764763) ,

Yes, I understand. Good to hear that it is working fine now.

Thanks,

Srinath T


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud