Title: Privacy Office Hour Notes – January 9th, 2019 Author: Laken H Published: January 18, 2019 --- [ ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/lakenh/) [Laken H](https://profiles.wordpress.org/lakenh/) 8:24 pm _on_ January 18, 2019 Tags: [core-privacy ( 53 )](https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/core-privacy/), [privacy ( 39 )](https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/privacy/)    # Privacy Office Hour Notes – January 9th, 2019 Huge thank you to all who attended the very productive office hours! The recap notes are a bit delayed, but they were not forgotten! A full agenda can also be [found in an earlier post](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/09/core-privacy-agenda-9-january-2019/), and the [full transcript can be found in Slack](https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C9695RJBW/p1547061276033400). Here are the highlights of the meeting: ## Agenda Item 1 – Roadmap Review * [@idea15](https://profiles.wordpress.org/idea15/) reminded us that there is a more recent version of the Roadmap. - [@desrosj](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/) will investigate how to give more maintainers access to update the roadmap page. * [@lakenh](https://profiles.wordpress.org/lakenh/) mentioned TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. issue [#44161](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/44161), regarding IP addresses stored within the usermeta table. - [@xkon](https://profiles.wordpress.org/xkon/) provided an example of a user metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. session token, and it contained both a user agent and IP address. - [@lakenh](https://profiles.wordpress.org/lakenh/) also discovered that the community-events-location user meta field also contains a full IP address. * He also suggested perhaps anonymizing that particular IP by dropping the last few places as the geographical location shouldn’t change by much. - [@desrosj](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/) then asked if these fields were accounted for within the original data export/erasure tools. * [@garrett-eclipse](https://profiles.wordpress.org/garrett-eclipse/) delivers the bad news that they were not. * Ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. to track this issue has been opened, [#45889](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/45889). ## Agenda Item 2 – 2019 * [@idea15](https://profiles.wordpress.org/idea15/) gave an update on the cross- project privacy group which broke ground at Drupal Europe. Joomla’s Glip (similar to WordPress’ SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform [https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/). The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at [https://make.wordpress.org/chat/](https://make.wordpress.org/chat/)) now has representatives from this WordPress Privacy team, Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, Umbraco, as well as other industry representatives who are all providing aid to make all CMSs have great privacy features built-in. * [@desrosj](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/) helped to set expectations for what privacy-related changes are acceptable moving forward based on a [recent discussion in #core-committers](https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C18723MQ8/p1543851973016600). Small enhancements and bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes will generally be OK to include in new releases with little oversight. Larger enhancements will need approval by version release leads. * Brainstorm session for how the team’s goals and the greater [WordPress project’s goals ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/08/9-priorities-for-2019/) overlap in 2019. - [@desrosj](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/) suggested the following three areas of being places that we can help out: * Providing a way for users to opt-in to automatic pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory [https://wordpress.org/plugins/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/) or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. and theme updates. * Providing a way for users to opt-in to automatic updates of major CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. releases. * Building a WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. [https://wordpress.org/](https://wordpress.org/) directory for discovering blocks, and a way to seamlessly install them. - [@desrosj](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/) also suggested Health Check as a _possible_ area, as perhaps there are some server level privacy checks that could be built in. * [@clorith](https://profiles.wordpress.org/clorith/) expressed that the team was open to any ideas and that privacy features for Health Check can be created as GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. [https://github.com/](https://github.com/) issues on its repo for consideration. [#core-privacy](https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/core-privacy/), [#privacy](https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/privacy/) ### Share this: * [ Threads ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=threads) * [ Mastodon ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=mastodon) * [ Bluesky ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=bluesky) * [ X ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=x) * [ Facebook ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=facebook) * [ LinkedIn ](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/privacy-office-hour-notes-january-9th-2019/?share=linkedin) 1. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5783a2d9b93f04f6d0a1ddabddcfd71f15136d7eaea7a87f9962d3f93f780224? s=32&d=mm&r=g) 2. [Ian Dunn](https://profiles.wordpress.org/iandunn/) 4:11 pm _on_ January 20, 2019 3. > @lakenh also discovered that the community-events-location user metaMeta Meta > is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the > team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. > field also contains a full IP address. He also suggested perhaps anonymizing > that particular IP by dropping the last few places as the geographical location > shouldn’t change by much. 4. It should already be doing that: 5. [https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/94fb16f03f7b5f2bcbbbf3ce2a2d4ce0e53c12f0/wp-includes/functions.php#L6458-L6516](https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/94fb16f03f7b5f2bcbbbf3ce2a2d4ce0e53c12f0/wp-includes/functions.php#L6458-L6516) 6. [https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/94fb16f03f7b5f2bcbbbf3ce2a2d4ce0e53c12f0/wp-includes/functions.php#L6458-L6516](https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/94fb16f03f7b5f2bcbbbf3ce2a2d4ce0e53c12f0/wp-includes/functions.php#L6458-L6516) that 7. * What address is being stored? ( feel free to DM it to me on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform [https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/). The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at [https://make.wordpress.org/chat/](https://make.wordpress.org/chat/) if you don’t want to post it publicly ) * What OS and PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher version is the server running? Comments are closed. # Post navigation [← New User Related Short Circuit Filters](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/18/new-user-related-short-circuit-filters/) [Editor Chat Agenda: January 23rd →](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/22/editor-chat-agenda-january-23rd/)