MSC3939: Account locking

proposals/3939-account-locking.md

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+# MSC3939: Account locking
+
+There are legitimate cases where server administrators might want the ability to
+temporarily lock users out of their account. For example, server administrators
+might require users to go through a regular, out-of-bounds verification check in
+order to keep using their account, and temporarily lock a user out of their
+account if they do not complete this check in time.
+
+At the time of writing this proposal, the only option for a server administrator
+to prevent a user from accessing their account is to deactivate it. However,
+this is a pretty destructive operation. Ideally, a locked account could be
+unlocked without any visible impact on the account itself (joined rooms,
+associated 3PIDs, etc).
+
+## Proposal
+
+A new `M_USER_LOCKED` is introduced, which is communicated to clients in `403 Forbidden` HTTP responses.
+
+When an account is locked:
+
+* homeservers must respond to any authenticated request from the user with
+  `M_USER_LOCKED`, _except_ for requests to `/logout` and `/logout/all`.
+* homeservers must not automatically invalidate existing access tokens for the
+  user.
+* clients should keep data that has already been locally persisted, unless the
+  user manually logs out.
+
+When an account is unlocked, clients and the homeserver can start interacting
+again as if nothing happened, similarly to when a client recovers after loss of
+connection.
+
+## Alternatives
+
+This proposal could be merged with
+[MSC3823](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/3823), which
+describes a similar concept coming from a content moderation perspective.
+However, locking and suspending an account are semantically different enough
+that the author of this proposal thinks that it makes sense for those two cases
+to be described differently in the API.
+
+Another option for merging this proposal with MSC3823 would be adding a
+`suspended` boolean property and an optional `href` string property (which would
+be required if `suspended` is `true`) to errors bearing the `M_USER_LOCKED`
+error code. Opinions are welcome on whether this is a better solution than using
+two distincts error codes.
+
+## Unstable prefix
+
+Until this proposal is accepted, implementations must use
+`ORG_MATRIX_MSC3939_USER_LOCKED` instead of `M_USER_LOCKED`.