This year, IRIS will begin implementing an expansion of its use of user login credentials in order to better understand our community of users and how they access data from its repositories. We want to reach out at this early stage of development to prepare you for what will be necessary in the near future to download data from IRIS Data Services.

Currently, users have not been required to provide any form of identifying marker, even an email address, when requesting data using our tools. The only exceptions to this have been with:

• BREQ_FAST requests — since this is email based, naturally an email return address was required, and inherent, in the request process.
• Restricted data access — certain volumes of data are only accessible by permission, and IRIS has maintained a minimally intrusive login procedure to validate access to these datasets.

Our intention, over the next few months, is to introduce a Bring Your Own Identity form of login that will apply to ALL seismic data access. We understand that there are many tools that run unattended and automated, and these will be accommodated as well. Our desire is to make this change as minimally intrusive as possible and to not require significant retooling on the part of developers or operators. We want to honor the convenience and scaling of automated processes and unattended displays.

Our aim is to garner better understanding of our user base and the broad uses of seismic data provided by SAGE data services while respecting the privacy of our users. This will help us demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of the data that we provide as a data collection, archive, curation, and distribution facility.

We will provide more updates to you and include more details as to what you and tool developers can expect through regular messages over the next few months. Please subscribe to the IRIS dmc-announcements mailing list to get timely messages on this effort.