[atlas] Public vs. Non-Public Probes

Hi Jonathan and others,

Thanks for bringing this point up again. I hope others will feel free to join in the discussion.

As Wilfried mentioned, we did have a discussion about public and non-public probes some time ago. Here are the relevant posts:

RIPE Labs article proposing making RIPE Atlas probes and measurements more public:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/proposing-making-ripe-atlas-data-more-public

Discussion on the ripe-atlas list:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/mat-wg/2013-December/000399.html

Conclusion:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/mat-wg/2014-March/000436.html

Consequences: new terms & conditions, with more clarification on this topic:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/ripe-atlas-moving-to-production-service
& https://atlas.ripe.net/legal/terms-conditions/

As you can see from the discussions above, some RIPE Atlas users felt it was important to retain the choice of marking their probes “non-public”.

We do encourage all RIPE Atlas users to mark their probes “public” for the greatest benefit to the community, and the majority of probes are public. However, non-public probes are still used both for built-in measurements and user-defined measurements; they are just not listed on the web or API. Once a user decides to plug a probe into their network, IP address information can no longer remain "private". This is why we prefer to refer to them as “non-public” probes rather than truly “private” probes. 

Of course, we care very much about protecting probe hosts’ privacy and we never make personal information like email addresses or MAC addresses public. There is some more information about this in the FAQs on the RIPE Atlas website under the answers to "Will my IP address show up in measurements done by my probe?” and "Is the measurement data made public?”, but the RIPE Labs article referenced above contains the most detailed information on the topic. 

Thanks again for your thoughts on this, and please let us know if you have any other questions or comments. 

Regards,

Vesna