Summary: The current flow writes all pending users to the user table and simply marks them as "pending". The user entry is removed when denied. This could lead to some unwanted symptoms like email squatting, spam user creation, and other downstream issues (e.g. automatic cohort creation)
Claude recommends to isolate pending users from the user table entirely. Only move when explicitly approved.
Another mitigation is to exclude "throwaway" ORCIDs - a few offending requests showed ORCIDs that were created the same day of user request. Simply marking this on approval page to avoid accidental approval would help or auto-denying recent ORCID accounts
Summary: The current flow writes all pending users to the user table and simply marks them as "pending". The user entry is removed when denied. This could lead to some unwanted symptoms like email squatting, spam user creation, and other downstream issues (e.g. automatic cohort creation)
Claude recommends to isolate pending users from the user table entirely. Only move when explicitly approved.
Another mitigation is to exclude "throwaway" ORCIDs - a few offending requests showed ORCIDs that were created the same day of user request. Simply marking this on approval page to avoid accidental approval would help or auto-denying recent ORCID accounts