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Anonymous users being prompted to log in

Anonymous users being prompted to log in

Hello there, I have a space that is open to the public with Anonymous Access enabled and Anonymous users have the View permission enabled.

Up until very recently this has worked perfectly but now I've had most users come to me and say that they can access the main overview page but when they click on an article link, they are pompted to login with no other way past it to get to the article.

Unfortunately I have been unable to replicate this myself when I log out and load the space up as an anonymous user. However a trusted partner has said that whenever he clicks on an article, it loads and he can view it for 2-5 seconds and then the login prompt is shown.

As I said this is a recent development and we have not changed any of the space settings recently that could have caused this.

Does anyone have any ideas what I can do to ensure it remains open to the public?

2 answers

0 votes

Hi @Chris Collins Welcome to the Atlassian Community Forums!

How does anonymous access fit Confluence’s permissions structure?

Anonymous access to content is controlled at 3 different levels:

Confluence – At the Confluence level (in global permissions), the Confluence admin or site admin decides whether to grant anonymous users any access to the instance.
Space – If anonymous access is allowed at the Confluence level, it’s then up to the space admins to decide whether they want to grant anonymous users any access to their space. If space access is granted, then anonymous users will have access to all pages in the space, unless restricted on the pages themselves.
Content – Anonymous users are restricted from viewing content when its access setting is Only specific people can view or edit, or when one of its parent content items has been set so that only specific people can access. This means that view restrictions are passed down to all of the nested items.

More about anonymous access

Essentially, the global setting enables the possibility of sharing content to anyone on the internet. It’s then up to the space admins whether they want to give anonymous users access to their spaces.
The global setting could be enabled, but if anonymous users haven’t been granted access to any spaces, no anonymous users will be able to access anything on your instance.
Space admins can grant anonymous users all the same permissions as regular users, except anonymous users can’t be admins of a space. For a list of all space permissions that can be granted, see Assign space permissions.

PS: By default, anonymous users start with no access to any spaces. For example, when a new space is created, anonymous users will have no access to that space, even if the global settings is enabled.