Title: Sensitive data in WordPress database
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# Sensitive data in WordPress database

 *  [bquade](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bquade/)
 * (@bquade)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sensitive-data-in-wordpress-database/)
 * What if a wordpress plugin were to store “semi-sensitive” data in database tables
   that were created by that plugin? The data would be separate from the common 
   wordpress tables, so it would seem private and secure. But as far as I know, 
   all plugins access the database through the same database user. So, even if the
   database is secure, I don’t have any control over which other plugins might want
   to take a peak and see what I have in my tables. And anyone could download my
   source code to see what I am doing to attempt to hide the “semi-sensitive” data.
   I don’t know if anyone monitors plugins to see if they are snooping around where
   they shouldn’t be. And I suppose some of the responsibility lies with the user
   to make sure they trust the sources of their plugins. But tight security is always
   the best option whenever possible.
 * I thought of creating a new database user, that would have exclusive access to
   the tables that my plugin creates. But that would require the common wordpress
   database user to have privileges to create new users, and also to have privileges
   to grant that new user access to the common wordpress tables. Whatever privileges
   the wordpress database user has is up to the system administrator who installed
   wordpress. And even if I were able to do that, I would still have to store the
   login information for that user in a file somewhere. Every other plugin could
   get access to that file since, as far as I know, they are all running under the
   same web server user, so there is no way to restrict access to a directory or
   a file to only one plugin.
 * It would be nice if every wordpress plugin could access the database with its
   own user that was granted standard privileges to the common wordpress tables,
   and also could create its own tables that no other plugin could access. I don’t
   know if that is possible to do in php code. I think it would require a human 
   system administrator to make it happen. It would be much more difficult to give
   each plugin its own directory.
 * It reminds me of Android. They have applications written by different people,
   but each one is isolated and runs as its own user. That is not as easy to implement
   with wordpress plugins.
 * Does anyone know of a good solution to this problem?

The topic ‘Sensitive data in WordPress database’ is closed to new replies.

 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [bquade](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bquade/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sensitive-data-in-wordpress-database/)
 * Status: not resolved

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