Why are there dozens of unrecognized assignees on my project?

[Aaron Godoy]

When I click the "Filter" dropdown on my Jira project and look at the Assignee section I see dozens of assignees with names I do not recognize. We are a small group and I am the only admin managing our team's Jira, so I know these are not legitimate users for us. I am worried about a security issue.

Some questions:

1. Does this mean my project is exposed to the public? How do I check that and lock that down?

2. How do I remove those users? There are far more of these random users than our own internal users so it's very distracting.


I checked the "Public sharing" setting (described here). This setting is already disabled. Are there any other settings I should look at first?

Thanks for the help!

[Nikola Perisic · Accepted solution]

Welcome @Aaron Godoy 

1. To check if your project is exposed to public, you need to go to Project Settings -> Permissions -> Browse projects - here you need to check for the role Public - if this is being added, then yes, your project is being exposed to the internet and you can change your permission scheme if you are the Jira administrator. To know if you are the Jira admin, click on the cog icon and check if you have Jira admin settings, if not, you are the regular user.

2. To remove those users, you need click on settings -> User management and look for those users, click on the three dots and select Delete user. 

[Aaron Godoy]

@Nikola Perisic thanks for the help. I couldn't find the "Browse projects" tab anywhere under Project Settings > Permissions, but you did lead me on the right trail.

For posterity... the origin of the mystery users for my scenario was a specific Service Project. I went to the project settings for that project and locked down permissions there. I also went to my admin settings, found the "Jira Service Management" section, and found a list with all of the mystery users. I was able to delete them there. They did not appear under the normal User Management section.

Edit: I double checked, I actually do see "Browse Projects". It's one of the entitlements listed under "Project settings" > "Project permissions" for the service project.