IETF Statistics

Privacy in IETF Statistics

“Your feedback is appreciated in making it safe”

Introduction

We assessed and updated the privacy aspects of the statistics production system in spring 2018.

For various good reasons the IETF process for making submissions is open and all information, including author's information is publicly available. The statistics tools use this information.

In the most recent version of the statistics tools, the statistics are based only on documents submitted to the IETF, and there is no per-person data held by the system beyond that. The system does, however, keep a record of information that individuals wanted to correct in their own data, on their own request. The system also has some information on names that appear to refer to the same person but are written in different ways (J. Smith vs. John Smith).

The system also has some information on other entities than persons, e.g., it recognises commonly appearing contributor affiliations, and stores information about where those companies are based in. This information is publicly known, e.g., listed on relevent company websites.

The system also uses publicly available IETF web site information about WGs, areas, chairs, ADs, IAB members, etc.

Policy and Commitment

These tools strive to make transparent what is happening at the IETF, where do contributions come from, in terms of companies, countriers, continents, or who are most productive authors of RFCs. There is legitimate community interesting in having such statistics available.

We try to provide this service based on information available in public sources, such as the IETF contributions themselves.

Should there be any concern about any information relating to a particular document author in these statistics, we provide an opportunity to send corrections or even remove data concerning a particular author on request, or provide any other type of feedback. Email jari.arkko(at)piuha.net.takeaway to contact the developer. Please use a subject line that includes the word authorstats.