Hide specific location in UI

Feature Requests
1

As a user of the UI i don’t want to be able to view any other user’s location data while still using precise location data to trigger automations.

Background: It seems to me to be extremely creepy that by default home assistant allows any user to view the location of any other user who is using some kind of specific tracker for presence detection (i,e, the mobile app). At the moment it’s just me and my partner and due to covid we’re together 95% of the time (so it’s not the end of the world) but if i had people come to stay or kids/teenagers then the ability to easily find their precise location (and vice versa) would be a dealbreaker.

Proposal: Home Assistant should implement some kind of config toggle for showing/hiding sensitive data via the UI, initially this would just be location data but should be extensible to any other field. This config toggle could default to off for existing installations to preserve the current functionality, but should default to on in future due to the privacy implications.

2

I assume you mean non-admin users right? Because its definitely not possible to hide this info from admin users. Even if you successfully managed to hide this from every UI any admin user could just make a script that sends them an HTML5 notification with with the lat/lng value from any person or device tracker entity unless you take away the ability to use that info in automations as well.

Once roles and permissions stops being an experimental feature and user accounts stop having the same access as owner accounts your suggestion makes sense. There are lots of things admins should be able to control in terms of what user accounts can see and do, access to precise location information being one of them.

That confuses me. Do you give everyone that comes to your house a login? If so I would not advise that. See above about how permissions are an experimental feature and user accounts have the same access as owner accounts.

If you just have a tablet on the wall showing HA UI or something then perhaps just don’t show the map panel in that UI. You and your partner can still get to it from other interfaces but you can hide it from that one which is too accessible. I actually personally find it really useful since my partner and I had previously set up a system to request each other’s precise location in a pinch and now can just use HA for that. But I agree that I would want to control access to that a bit more.

3

I assume you mean non-admin users right?

Ideally no. I would like to be able to hide this data from all users through the UI. I’m aware that this is somewhat security through obscurity but IMHO this is data that is useful to the machine but should not be easily accessible to humans

That confuses me. Do you give everyone that comes to your house a login? If so I would not advise that. See above about how permissions are an experimental feature and user accounts have the same access as owner accounts.

Right now we don’t have anyone come to stay, covid and all, but i would like to be able to do this. I guess that will have to wait until there is a better form of RBAC implemented. Ideally i would also like to be able to set up roles which give users access to specific rooms (but that is a separate discussion)

4

First I totally agree there should be bona fide user, admin, and maybe one in between with definable rules.

So I’m just wondering would you give them a user and set the app up on their mobile? If you want them to be able to control certaian aspects of the house consider a kiosk with something like HAD dashboard. Display it just as a dash in a web browser and there is no user acoount needed.

I also use a combination of bluetooth monitoring and wifi for access control. I only need enter a guests wifi and bluetooth mac to set up their person. I don’t need to give them any other access.

5

So I’m just wondering would you give them a user and set the app up on their mobile?

we’re getting a little off topic but ideally yes. I would like to be able to use geofencing with guests as well. The whole point of a smart home to me is the automations. i.e. when everyone leaves ensure the lights/tv are off, when somebody comes home turn the lights on. I would love for guests to be able to access this functionally (i will be having my parents come to stary for a few months once international travel picks up).

6

I do exactly that using monitor and wifi, works flawlessly. Best part is they have no access to anything else. I shoot a message via mqtt to monitor. And set up a simple confidence sensor. It takes but 2 minutes to add a user or delete as well.

7

Yeah this would be cool.

Though for now I ‘solved’ (obscured) it by:

  • Disabling the map feature
  • Displaying person entities in a glance card without actions. So you’ll se locations you’ve configured. Home or ‘away’
type: glance
entities:
  - entity: person.a
    tap_action: none
    hold_action: none
    double_tap_action: none
  - entity: person.b
    tap_action: none
    hold_action: none
    double_tap_action: none
1 Like