extended-monitor Extension

Copyright © 2021 Simon Ser <contact@emersion.fr>

Unlimited redistribution and modification of this document is allowed provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice remains intact.

Extends: Monitor, away-notify, account-notify, chghost, setname


Description 🔗

With the help of extensions such as away-notify, account-notify, chghost and setname, clients are able to keep other users’ metadata up-to-date with their local state when they share a channel. However, clients are not able to do so when they don’t share a channel.

The monitor extension allows clients to track when another user goes offline or comes online. This specification extends MONITOR to also include AWAY, ACCOUNT, CHGHOST and SETNAME notifications.

The extended-monitor capability advertises that the server supports sending such extended notifications for monitored nicks. When enabled by the client:

Privacy considerations 🔗

This extension allows users to monitor personal information of other users. Since the IRC protocol doesn’t provide any way to atomically change this personal information (nick, host, realname all at the same time), it may be possible for an outside observer to track nick changes:

In this scenario, it’s possible for the observer to figure out that nick A and nick B are owned by the same user by comparing the host and realname.

For this reason, privacy conscious clients are advised to disconnect and re-connect to the IRC server as a way to atomically update personal information.


Software supporting extended-monitor: Ergo, InspIRCd, UnrealIRCd, glirc, HexChat, mIRC, senpai, gamja, IRCCloud, Goguma, soju (as Server), soju (as Client), Eggdrop, Kitteh IRC Client Library