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proposals/3866-user-not-approved-error.md

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+# MSC3866: `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` error code
+
+Over the past few years, there has been some demand for the ability to let
+administrators of homeservers approve any new user created on their homeserver
+before their account can be used. This allows for better control upon
+registration and a potential option for mitigating abuse as an alternative to
+disabling registration on a homeserver or forcing new users to fill in
+additional details such as an email address.
+
+## Proposal
+
+This document proposes the addition of a new `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` error
+code to the Matrix specification. This error code can be returned in two
+scenarios: registration and login.
+
+This proposal does not describe a way for the homeserver to alert an
+administrator about new accounts that are waiting to be reviewed, or a way for
+administrators to approve or deny an account. This is left as an implementation
+detail, as different homeserver implementations have different ways for
+administrators to interact with them (e.g. Synapse's admin API vs Conduit's
+admin room).
+
+An error with the code `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` must include an
+`approval_notice_medium` field, which indicates to the user how the homeserver
+will let them know of their account's approval. This proposal specifies the
+following values:
+
+* `m.email`: the user is made aware of their account's approval by email to an
+  address they provided during registration.
+* `m.none`: the user is not made aware of their account approval in an automated
+  way that's managed by the homeserver. This can mean that a server
+  administrator will reach out to them out of bounds (using any relevant
+  medium), or that they should wait some time and try logging in again to see if
+  their account has been approved.
+
+### Registration
+
+When a user successfully registers on a homeserver that is configured so that
+new accounts must be approved by an administrator, the final `POST
+/_matrix/client/v3/register` request is responded to with a `403 Forbidden`
+response that includes the `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` error code. For example:
+
+```json
+{
+    "errcode": "M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL",
+    "error": "This account needs to be approved by an administrator before it can be used.",
+    "approval_notice_medium": "m.email"
+}
+```
+
+### Login
+
+When a user whose account is still pending approval by a server administrator
+attempts to log in, `POST /_matrix/client/v3/login` requests are responded to
+with a `403 Forbidden` response that includes the `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL`
+error code. For example:
+
+```json
+{
+    "errcode": "M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL",
+    "error": "This account is pending approval by a server administrator. Please try again later.",
+    "approval_notice_medium": "m.email"
+}
+```
+
+This error can be returned in any login request, as long as the homeserver is
+confident that the user trying to log in is pending approval - as opposed to
+registration requests where only the last one can return such an error, in order
+to ensure the registration completes.
+
+This error can also be returned by login requests performed in the context of a
+user's first authentication through an SSO provider. Since this does not involve
+the user's client performing a `/register` request, this means the homeserver
+must track approval of users when they are registered as part of the SSO flow.
+
+Once an account is approved, homeserver must allow the user to log in (unless
+the account becomes unavailable for unrelated reasons, e.g. by getting
+deactivated).
+
+## Potential issues
+
+### Informing the user about this feature before they register
+
+This MSC does not include a way to communicate to clients early on whether the
+homeserver requires new accounts to be approved by an administrator, which can
+make the registration experience frustrating (because the user might not be
+expecting to need to wait before using their account). The author of this
+proposal tried and failed to figure out a good way to expose this information:
+
+* the capabilities endpoint is authenticated and therefore does not work in this
+  context
+* the `/versions` endpoint does not feel like the correct place to expose
+  information about locally-enabled features
+* adding a boolean to initial `/register` requests feels out of place, and could
+  potentially be non-trivial to implement in a way that doesn't get in the way
+  of User-Interactive Authentication
+
+### Informing the user about their account's approval
+
+By design, Matrix does not force users to provide way to contact them outside of
+Matrix (e.g. via email) when registering. This means the homeserver might not
+have a way to let the user know once their account has been approved by their
+administrator. In this case, homeservers should use the `m.none` value for the
+`approval_notice_medium` field in error responses. The expectation is then that
+a server administrator reaches out to the user out of bounds, or that the user
+waits some time before manually trying to log in again.
+
+## Security considerations
+
+It shouldn't be necessary to implement the `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` error code
+on other endpoints than `/register` and `/login`. This is because other
+endpoints are either unauthenticated (in which case we don't care about whether
+the user is approved) or authenticated via an access token (in which case the
+fact that the user has an access token either means they've managed to log in
+(meaning they've been approved) or a server administrator generated one for
+them).
+
+## Unstable prefix
+
+During development, the following unstable identifiers must be used:
+
+| Stable identifier          | Unstable identifier                         |
+|----------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
+| `M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` | `ORG.MATRIX.MSC3866_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL` |
+| `m.email`                  | `org.matrix.msc3866.email`                  |
+| `m.none`                   | `org.matrix.msc3866.none`                   |