Skip to content

PRIVACY.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
113 lines (86 loc) · 5.37 KB

PRIVACY.md

File metadata and controls

113 lines (86 loc) · 5.37 KB
Raw

Privacy and Telemetry

MCP Observatory collects identity-rich product, security, adoption, and reliability telemetry when it is enabled. Scan artifacts, source code, files, raw MCP requests/responses, and command output remain local unless an operator explicitly runs a hosted upload or another integration.

The controller is William Weishuhn, operator of MCP Observatory. Privacy and data-rights requests may be sent to william@banksey.com.

Collection modes and controls

Before sending an event, the CLI requests a non-recording policy decision from the telemetry service. Configured prior-consent jurisdictions and unknown or unreachable policy decisions collect nothing until the operator runs mcp-observatory telemetry enable or sets MCP_OBSERVATORY_TELEMETRY=1. Other configured jurisdictions receive a conspicuous first-run notice and use telemetry by default.

The following always disable collection and remove unsent queued events:

  • mcp-observatory telemetry disable
  • MCP_OBSERVATORY_TELEMETRY=0
  • DO_NOT_TRACK=1
  • the legacy MCP_OBSERVATORY_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1

Use mcp-observatory telemetry status --verbose to inspect the effective mode, or mcp-observatory telemetry preview to see an exact unsent event. The local configuration and bounded retry queue are stored with owner-only permissions.

Fields collected when available

Identity and provenance:

  • installationId, machineId, machineFingerprint, sessionId, runId, eventId, schemaVersion, noticeVersion, and timestamps;
  • hostname, gitEmail, gitRemoteUrl, gitRepoHost, gitRepoOrg, gitRepoName, gitEmailDomain, hostnameDomain, org, contact, and isEnterprise; and
  • githubRepository, githubWorkflow, githubRunId, githubRunNumber, githubEventName, githubRef, githubActor, isCI, ciName, ciProvider, environmentKind, distributionChannel, isFirstParty, isFixture, isAutomation, telemetrySource, campaign, stage, and referrer.

Usage and results:

  • event, command, transport, package/Node/OS/architecture versions, feature chain, recent command sequence, session duration, and feature flags;
  • target IDs, installed servers, sanitized server commands, detected languages and frameworks, and tool/prompt/resource/server counts; and
  • health score/grade, gate/check status, finding and severity counts, security mode, connection/execution latency, classified fatal error, receipt/risk graph/lock/matrix/CI-setup outcomes, and other bounded historical result metadata documented by telemetry preview.

optedInEmail and the optional firstContactChannel are collected only after telemetry identify --email <email> [--channel <slug>]. That command also explicitly enables telemetry for the installation. These fields are used for private analytics and are not an authorization for automated outreach.

Data deliberately excluded

The client allowlists telemetry fields and removes recognized credentials from remote URLs, server commands, and errors. It does not intentionally transmit tokens, passwords, environment-variable values, source code, file contents, raw MCP messages, scan artifacts, command output, or unknown enrichment fields. Telemetry failures never change the command result. Delivery has a three-second ceiling and a bounded owner-only retry queue.

Purposes, recipients, access, and retention

Data supports product analytics, security and reliability research, adoption measurement, aggregate benchmarking, organization attribution, and private company/adoption intelligence. Notice-and-opt-out collection is used only where a reviewed legitimate-interest assessment or another documented non-consent basis applies; consent is the basis where the jurisdiction or collection mechanism requires prior consent. The operator maintains the purpose, balancing, jurisdiction, and notice-version record and must update it before any materially new use. Cloudflare processes requests and stores the private D1 database. No raw identity-rich event data is published.

Events have no scheduled expiry while these purposes remain active, subject to an annual necessity review and valid access, correction, objection, or deletion requests. Deleted data expires from provider recovery copies according to the provider's backup window.

Explicit hosted operations

The cloud upload command sends the selected RunArtifact to the configured endpoint. Cloud login stores credentials locally for the hosted client. The hosted control plane is responsible for authentication, organization isolation, retention, storage, and hosted workflow policy.

Do not upload secrets, production credentials, private URLs, source code, or customer data unless the agreed hosted workflow specifically requires it.

Commercial forms

Pilot and partner forms collect only the information explicitly submitted: business contact details, company or domain, role, high-level MCP deployment context, timing, and campaign attribution. They are used to respond to the request and operate the commercial pipeline.

Submit a pilot request at:

https://mcp-observatory.com/release-gate-pilot/

Repository separation

Ingestion, raw events, company intelligence, administrative rights handling, and private metrics are operated in a separate private repository. This public package contains the client and user controls but no raw-data export, intelligence, fleet-monitoring, or private metrics functionality.