From 9466833900620adf8c2f658369374c969a79a33d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Patrick Cloke Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:28:19 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] MSC4009: Expanding the Matrix ID grammar to enable E.164 IDs (#4009) * E.164 Matrix IDs. * Fix typo. * small typo fixes * Expand examples. Another reasonable way around this is to use a prefix, instead of character mapping. The downsides are essentially the same. * Updates from feedback. * Fix typos. Co-authored-by: Hubert Chathi * Add note about re-using IDs. --------- Co-authored-by: Andrew Morgan <1342360+anoadragon453@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Hubert Chathi --- proposals/4009-e.164-matrix-ids.md | 103 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 103 insertions(+) create mode 100644 proposals/4009-e.164-matrix-ids.md diff --git a/proposals/4009-e.164-matrix-ids.md b/proposals/4009-e.164-matrix-ids.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca86a8cd --- /dev/null +++ b/proposals/4009-e.164-matrix-ids.md @@ -0,0 +1,103 @@ +# MSC4009: Expanding the Matrix ID grammar to enable E.164 IDs + +[E.164](https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.164) is a set of international standards +for telephone numbering. This defines a phone number as a `+` followed by a country +code (e.g. `1` for the US, `44` for the UK) followed by a local phone number. +For example, a E.164 phone number would look like: `+15558675309`. + +It is somewhat common[^1] for social networks or messaging applications to use phone +numbers as identifiers instead of relying on users remembering separate usernames +(and needing to tell other users how to find them). + +[Matrix user identifiers](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/appendices/#user-identifiers) +are *almost* compatible with E.164: + +> The `localpart` of a user ID is an opaque identifier for that user. It MUST NOT +> be empty, and MUST contain only the characters `a-z`, `0-9`, `.`, `_`, `=`, `-`, +> and `/`. + +## Proposal + +Add `+` to the list of allowed characters in a Matrix user identifier. This would +allow a full E.164 phone number as a user's username on a server, which is common +practice for many applications. This should hopefully ease bridging of those +services to Matrix or help them natively speak Matrix in the future. Users would +not need to learn a new Matrix ID, but can continue using their phone number, as +today. + +Although E.164 IDs are meant to be globally unique they are still namespaced under +a domain under this proposal, e.g. `@+15558675309:example.com`, as the same user may +already be registered on multiple service providers. + +## Potential issues + +Homeservers and clients must already be +[more tolerant of Matrix user IDs](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/appendices/#historical-user-ids): + +> Older versions of this specification were more tolerant of the characters +> permitted in user ID localparts. [...] clients and servers MUST accept user IDs +> with localparts from the expanded character set: +> +> `extended_user_id_char = %x21-39 / %x3B-7E ; all ASCII printing chars except :` + +Thus, it is expected to not cause any issues, although clients will need to identify +that the `+` character is valid for a homeserver. This could be from the supported +Matrix versions which the homeserver advertises. + +---- + +A user having two accounts with the same identifier on different services is not +ideal, but is not different than today where a user may log into both WhatsApp +and Signal with their phone number. This MSC does *not* attempt to help with mapping +of an E.164 identifier to an actual Matrix ID, that's best left to the current +[identity service `/lookup` endpoint](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/identity-service-api/#post_matrixidentityv2lookup) +or future discovery services. + +---- + +If a service uses E.164 identifiers as Matrix IDs then it must be careful to avoid +leaking history when reassigning IDs to new users. This is related to [#234](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/234), +but only applies to the localpart of the Matrix ID, not the entire domain. The +solution remains the same: using portable identifiers ([MSC1228](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/1228) +or [MSC4014](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/4014)). + +## Alternatives + +The `+` could continue to be disallowed and left off the beginning of the Matrix +IDs. Note that Synapse reserves digit-only usernames for guest users, although this +seems to be an implementation detail and not mandated by the specification. + +Another option would be to [map from other character sets](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/appendices/#mapping-from-other-character-sets) +or prefix the Matrix ID with something (e.g. `msisdn`). +This would generate a Matrix ID like `@=2b15558675309:example.com` or +`@msisdn_5558675309:example.com`, which would dramatically impact usability +for the users on homeservers which use phone numbers as identifiers. + +---- + +Although E.164 limits the `+` character to the initial character there seems to +be no reason to limit that for Matrix identifiers. + +## Security considerations + +E.164 IDs are globally unique, but the proposed change only enforces per-homeserver +uniqueness. If a homeserver does not diligently check that the phone number belongs +to a user then this may allow additional spoofing attacks. The author does not consider +this to be much worse than today's situation: + +1. Many current applications need to verify that a phone number truly is owned + by an account. Any current best practices should be followed by a service + taking advantage of this MSC. +2. It is already quite easy today to spoof a user's ID by registering the same + user localpart on a different homeserver. The same issue occurs with email or + other distributed system (Mastodon, etc.). + +## Unstable prefix + +N/A + +## Dependencies + +N/A + +[^1]: E.g. Signal, WhatsApp, etc.