You want to offer simpler way for your distribution user to find and distribute their tickets to their guest and avoid data leaks? Activate the address book feature for the distribution tool.
Solution
The address book is a user-specific simple list of contacts. Each address book item (contact) is then eventually linked to the actual matching contact. However this is achieve without leaking any information about existing contacts. Even better, changes made by the real contact to his/her data does not propagate to address book item. The address book works exactly like the contacts on your phone.
When distributing to a contact of the address book, i.e., to an email address, there are two cases:
- The matching contact (email address) does not exist. Similarly to what happens without the address book, a new contact is created using the data entered by the sender (distribution user). However, on top of that, a link is created between that new contact and the address book entry of the sender. For example, if the address book entry was named "John Secutix" the new contact will also be named "John Secutix"
- The match contact already exists. In this case no contact is created but a link is created between that contact and the address book entry of the sender. For example, the address book entry named "John Secutix" would be linked to the existing contact name "John Doe". Notice that last name is different but not leaked back to the sender of the tickets.
Keeping a link with the actual contact allows to target the right contact even if the contact details, first name, last name and email, are later changed by the contact itself.
Getting started
In the Distribution panel of the Internet parameters of the point of sales, activate the distribution using the address book. This will enable the Address book menu entry under the Distribution section of the portal.
Contacts of the address book can be added, update and deleted autonomously by the distribution user. Note that the link between the address book contact and the actual contact is only added upon distribution. If the corresponding contact, matched using the email address, does not exist then a new contact is created using the data entered in the address book. If the corresponding contact already exists, then the address book data is not propagated to the actual contact. This avoids any data leakage as the match is done using the email address but no information is given to the distribution user. For example, if the user create an address book contact named "John Doe" with email president@secutix.com, assuming such an address exists for a contact name "Mike Smith", the corresponding contact will be linked but the name "Mike Smith" will not be revealed.
Once the link between the address book contact and the actual contact is created, the email address of the address book contact cannot be edited anymore. This guarantees that it is clear which email address was used to match the actual contact. Note that if the actual contact could decides to change email address, it is does not impact the link. So a distribution user continue distributing tickets to that same address book contact, e.g., president@secutix.com, even if the actual contact's email would have changed to, e.g., ceo@secutix.com.
A contact can obviously be linked by many address book contacts. All the address book links to an actual contact are automatically deleted, if that contact is deleted or anonymized. Also, the link from an address book contact is deleted if the address book contact itself is deleted.
In the step 2 of the distribution process, the distribution user can search in its address book and select a recipient in the list. The user can also create a new address book contact directly from that screen. The rest of the distribution process is unchanged.
