Document Security - read-only, no download

[Greg Della-Croce]

We have a site on our system that needs to be able to let the owner post documents for others to read, but not be able to download them from the site. I am wondering how to set this sort of security on documents for this one site.

Greg

[JohnA · Accepted solution]

Hi Greg,

To prevent attachment downloads you will need to edit the velocity files in your <Confluence_Install_Directory> as described in this document: https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=215484007

You should only do this if you know what you're doing, you have thoroughly tested it and you have understood that you will need to rollback the customisation for upgrades, (and reapply it again afterwards), but I believe this is your best solution.

However, this solution disables downloading of attachments for everyone, admins included, so you would need to work out a way of accessing the files from the file system as they will be unavailable from the application. One solution for that would be to only apply the customisation to one Space and then move the pages to a new Space that the users cannot access, as this would allow you to still download the attachments from the application, (presumably a preferrable solution).

All the best,
John

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's actually totally impossible.

When your browser displays the content of a file, then it's downloaded it. There's no such thing as "read without downloading". There are tricks to obscure things and make it more difficult (e.g. displaying files as images, or providing them in locked formats), but there's no useful way to stop someone who is determined from getting a copy of what you've posted.

[David Toussaint [Communardo]]

well put :)

[Greg Della-Croce]

Thanks, I know that ther is no 100% way to stop it, but I do want to make it difficult for people to do for this page.