Why does cron run as an anonymous user?

Question

I ran into an issue recently where my hook_cron function was failing when triggered by cron. The problem was that I was calling EntityFieldQuery, which does access checks and since cron runs as an anonymous user, the query would to process correctly. Specifically, I was having this issue: EntityFieldQuery doesn't work correctly in hook_cron

I am trying to understand why cron runs as an anonymous user. Cron clears the cache and so has at least some database access. When writing hook_cron functions now, I have to bypass access checks so that they return results as expected. Does anyone understand why this is the intended behaviour?

Drupal 7

Answer 1

A cronjob should not have to be run by a specific drupal user. It sounds just like a maintenance task that should run sometimes to do something (send a part of a mail queue, clear some part of cache or whatever).

In some installs (all of mine, for example) run crons via drush/linux cronjob. cron_safe_threshold is set to 0 (never).

Typical tasks managed by hook_cron() are database maintenance, backups, recalculation of settings or parameters, automated mailing, and retrieving remote data.