In cyclone we base ssh/http authentication on edugain, and consider that the email is an identifier.
When deploying a component we need to get the email of the VM owner in order to allow only her/him to access to different services (http, ssh, ...). For now we have a hacky way of getting the email.
Could we have a checkbox when writing a component saying "This component needs to know the email of the owner", and as a consequence inform the user when starting the component or an application with this component that it will access to the email. Getting the email could be achieved with ss-get ss:owner.email.