It's pretty clear that the maintainer should've handled it better but I'd be lying if I said I never felt like telling a petulant user off. The problem is he didn't handle it professionally.
Well, I didn't check the git history so I can't confirm or deny that he implemented the feature, in any case, if you read the comment about how the passwords are anonymized it sounds pretty reasonable.
Leaving that aside, even if you diagree with it you (the user) are not entitled to anything, especially not entitled to have an attitude.
Just think about it differently, what do you think would happen if you do the same in the real world?
I'm pretty sure in the best case scenario you may be asked to leave and in the worst case scenario you may be "escorted" out of the premises.
I have another tab open where I am about to buy a home assistant green and start a journey of probably-pointless automations. This is giving me pause. Not about sending hashes to haveibeenpwned, but about the response this got on github.
You may find this unasked for scan humiliating, but we can mathematically prove we're not humiliating you. Any feelings of discomfort or humiliation are therefore invalid and should be set aside.
Edit: I'm sure a greater good argument can be made. I just don't think they are making it in a way that justifies the invasiveness.
Was thinking of setting my own assistant using Home Assistant to replace the Google Home device I got rid of. Looks like I should slow down and take a closer look at this.
As someone whose smart home need is minimal -- I just use it to turn on/off lights with voice -- I'd rather have nothing than support such behavior.
Nothing and no one is perfect, but Home Assistant is orders of magnitude better than any other home automation suite. The fact that there's enough transparency for this to be discovered, for this conversation to happen, and for the maintainer to publicly apologize is evidence of that.
There is nothing in that 5 year old thread that goes beyond standard issue friction between someone who created something and someone who wants to administrate something.
There is stuff to be mad about, but that does not include a dev five years ago telling the memeOS "hey can you maybe please don't do this. I am worries that it will cause more work for me if you do that"
interesting that the crux of the Nix dispute was about how he wanted to self-modify the HA after install, and the crux of the current dispute is how HA should be able to scan your secrets and upload truncated hashes
I wouldn't be surprised if that integration is outright illegal in EU due to GDPR, thus putting HIBP in trouble for ingesting PII without any legal legitimacy.
And the first reply being "It is not an invasion of privacy" just shows incompetence on privacy topics. It is never a valid answer.
Which is really concerning, for the lead developer of a home automation system that "fights for the fundamental principle of privacy" as per their mission statement.
(For missing context from this bare link to an issue with no context provided by the submitter — Home Assistant apparently integrated the same Have I Been Pwned safe scanning process that many other password managers have.)
I have a great deal of sympathy for them refusing to engage; decisive software creators are far less palatable to an entitled swarm of disagreement, and that same decisiveness is what makes the best software. Perhaps in U.S. culture, refusal with a smile and a reassurance that “We’re Listening” is something folks feel entitled to, but in other areas of the world, demanding a stranger change their mind once it’s made up earns only mockery or pity. To those cultures, this GitHub is a comedy-farce, and I laughed out loud upon reading it — not because I necessarily agree with the project’s decision, but because I agree culturally with their tone and handling of what some view as blatant immaturity: a final flat refusal, closing the door, and getting back to work.
It sounds like the dev's reason for rejecting the issue is that the issue was opened on the documentation repo rather than the code repo.
On the one hand, it's understandable. No amount of documentation changes will fix the issue.
On the other hand, it's a pretty abrasive response. It wouldn't have taken any more effort to be a little more helpful and direct OP to the right repo: "Sorry, this is the wrong place for this to be addressed. Please bring it up here instead [link]."
If you actually read through, the option to disable the functionality was already present… just not documented. So it seems the documentation repo was the correct place to open it
Giving the home assistant core developers the benefit of the doubt, I am sure there are good intentions here. But if they are interested in adding new security features, adding support for phishing-resistant multi factor authentication (passkeys) would be much more valuable. Users have been asking for it for some time, and even submitted patches, which were rejected.
That makes it even worse. A leak is still a leak even when you haven't notice it.
Personally I use HIBP but I would still be annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.
What, do you not include links to every single one of your social media accounts in every single post you make on GitHub? I think this is a very cool and normal thing, and not a concerning red flag about narcissistic tendencies at all.
Frenck here, I'm the one who replied on that issue.
My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been. My apologies. I've posted a follow-up on the issue.
As it turns out, the check can already be turned off after all:
ha security options --pwned=false
It has been part of the Supervisor for years and checks app options that are marked as passwords. A recent release fixed the warning that surfaces it, which is why people are noticing it now.
why lying on your first reply? you mentioned 1Password did the same, in an attempt to make yourself "less guilty", but you failed to realize 1Password doesn't enable that option automatically without consent, and in some cases this option is periodically DISABLED automatically. address this, please, it's pretty embarrassing to lie like this just to cover y'all's ass.
Not a lie, but I was wrong on that one. I'm happy to admit that.
I've used 1Password's Watchtower for so many years that I assumed the breached password check was just part of it. After your reply I looked it up and learned it's actually a setting in their privacy preferences, so my comparison was off.
People accusing others of lying all the time is a major problem in current societal discourse.
It’s not a lie if the speaker believes it to be true; it’s just a mistake. A lie must have the intention to mislead behind it.
I don’t dispute that there is a lot of, perhaps way more, lying going on, especially in politics now, but let’s not both inflame opinions and cheapen the word ‘lie’ by just using it for non-deliberate falsehoods.
Asking basically the same thing as the sibling replies, but hopefully in a less aggressive way: can you elaborate on what led you to reply like that in the first place? As someone with no horse in the race (I don't use Home Assistant), the first reply you gave genuinely does seem like it was intended in good faith, even if it was not satisfying to the user, and I can understand that angry users are not fun to interact with, but I'm struggling to wrap my head around why your second reply was "This issue is closed as won't fix" without any elaboration about why. The explanation that seems most likely to me is that you were annoyed at the user and decided not to spend any time looking into the issue, which would be unfortunate but maybe understandable if that's what you're apologizing for. Without any explanation about why you quickly dismissed and then suddenly turned around and changed your mind later though, I think you've risked the apology coming across more as damage control than genuine regret.
I do get the sense that you're not malicious, just that maybe you're not seeing this from the standpoint of someone that assigns a higher value to some elements of privacy. In this case, your user base expects a home automation system. They do not expect that system to scan their computer for passwords, regardless of how "safely" the home automation system were to behave.
You might have a heart of gold, and just be having an off day due to reasons, so I hope people cut you some slack, but if I were you I'd update this feature to be opt-in and conspicuous, immediately
I've not seen the claim that it is scanning their computer for passwords. My understanding is the ones it checks are those that are used in HA's config (I assume, for different devices it connects to in your home).
There are a lot of problems with poor security practices devices of this type. Maybe the feature is a bit too paternalistic but it is not malicious.
I still agree its not the right default but thats quite a lot less invasive than you are making it sound.
Is it inappropriate? Not really. Is it a threat? Yeah, it really is. “I’m going to stop using your software if you don’t change this” is a threat. “I’m going to fork it and ship a competing product” is a stronger threat.
It was a clear attempt to sway with intimidation. It was done politely but that doesn’t change what it was. (The dev had already closed as won’t fix, too, so they had preemptively answered.)
“hey, X is a dealbreaker for me, if this is not fixed please let me know so I can look for someone else”
“how dare you threaten me?”
I understand how one might feel attacked by an ultimatum, but a policy of rejecting ultimatums altogether only has the benefit of keeping pride intact, on the other hand it discourages people in your life from giving you a last chance, from communicating why they are leaving, and for letting them come back if the parting was amicable
best response is to just communicate you are not fixing X and parting ways amicably, no hard feelings. not only is it beneficial for the ultimated party, but it’s fair for the ultimating party, who is absolutely in their own right to rescind their voluntary relationship, in no way is it a threat to communicate that possibility, because a threat implies violence or damage.
Again, I did not say the threat in this case was inappropriate. It’s totally legitimate to say “this doesn’t work for me; change it or I’m out”. But it is a threat. We should be honest with what we are doing. If nothing else it makes it easier to understand (and predict) a defensive reaction when we understand and acknowledge a threat is being delivered.
there’s certainly an ambiguety in the word threat, where the main definition is about violent coercion, but it is sometimes used as a useful metaphoric shorthand.
and it’s very common for the usage to cause conflict, the exchange of “are you threatening me?” “no, i’m just telling you what I’ll do” is very common.
i personally wouldn’t use it as a shorthand when there’s no violence or punitory damage implied, unless I purposefully wanted to escalate things. it’s a word that refers to violence, so it will harsh the vibes instantly
a key element of coercion (and this is deeply studied in law so there is less subjectivity than regular language) is that the hypothetical presented cause a damage, and then the avoidance of that damage is traded for a positive action. it doesn’t really apply to a case where a person exercises their right (to leave) and it only secondarily (or not at all) causes a damage, there is no intent to harm and no manipulation of the other into acting one way to avoid that harm.
Here we have the classic if you want something to happen in the corporate world, make it go viral on the internet. Except, humans will be humans and it played out in open source.
In this case, frenck most certainly backtracked because they realized they were on the front page of HN and did not want the heat.
To be fair, nabu casa comms kinda leave not many other options than stuff like this happening, as the general strategy they employ could be described with the single word "tarpit".
- Should a password manager warn me about reused passwords without sending things out without opt in? yes
- Should a password manager send even one byte of my data to any service, regardless of whether it is for a good intention and mathematically proven to be "safe" without opt in? I'd say no.
- So would any other product out there, be it a smart home manager or a toaster, send any of of my data, hashed or not to any 3rd party without opt in? even if it's just the byte "1" to a page called "donothing.com"? I say hell no.
- Should open source developers who are not Linus Torvalds be a bit nicer on a public issue?
- And should open source users should be less heated because "let us know if you plan to fix this or we will uninstall and fork it" deserves the "go ahead, this is open source, threats don't really help here"
We all can sometimes write a reply at the heat of the moment that we later regret. Frenk definitely realized it after the fact and I respect him owning it, apologizing, and keeping the old messages. He is right it's open source, and he doesn't owe anyone anything, but still, I believe a phoning home of any kind is violating The Principle of Least Astonishment.
This feature should be opt-in, but can someone explain how this is a security concern? I don't understand how it would be an actual security risk to share the first 5 digits of the sha256 of my passwords.
I think the main issue is that you don't expect a service to send anything related to your data without letting you know. Even if it's a ping "alive" sent to a server they own.
Imagine if your smart toilet would just send a small anonymized message to a urine sampling analysis service so it can let you you know your cholesterol levels are a bit high, totally anonymous, totally for your benefit. Maybe it's a great feature, but would anyone expect this to happen without consent / opt in?
because why should my electric light scheduler be in the business of inspecting my passwords and furthermore involving third parties in inspecting my passwords?
I never really clicked with Home Assistant. I found it easier to generate a new service to replace HA than to maintain an HA installation. And this way, it has only the things I want in it.
You could start with mine (https://hometruth.ai/), or just make your own. It's truly easy these days and it works much better than HA ever did for me.
TavsiE9s | an hour ago
l-albertovich | an hour ago
zephyreon | an hour ago
l-albertovich | an hour ago
It's pretty clear that the maintainer should've handled it better but I'd be lying if I said I never felt like telling a petulant user off. The problem is he didn't handle it professionally.
gvfsa | an hour ago
l-albertovich | an hour ago
Leaving that aside, even if you diagree with it you (the user) are not entitled to anything, especially not entitled to have an attitude.
Just think about it differently, what do you think would happen if you do the same in the real world?
I'm pretty sure in the best case scenario you may be asked to leave and in the worst case scenario you may be "escorted" out of the premises.
A little bit of politeness goes a long way.
ragall | an hour ago
eur0pa | an hour ago
onionisafruit | an hour ago
flanz_10 | an hour ago
what a petty answer. "just fork it bro".
flapperdeflip | an hour ago
jackpepsi | an hour ago
Edit: I'm sure a greater good argument can be made. I just don't think they are making it in a way that justifies the invasiveness.
janice1999 | an hour ago
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277
netsharc | an hour ago
fg137 | 58 minutes ago
As someone whose smart home need is minimal -- I just use it to turn on/off lights with voice -- I'd rather have nothing than support such behavior.
overtone1000 | 28 minutes ago
hypfer | 57 minutes ago
a) five years ago
b) nothing to be ashamed of, honestly
c) dumb drama
This is bad faith. You could reference it in good faith as context, but that is not what you are doing.
jeremyjh | 50 minutes ago
hypfer | 43 minutes ago
You people are mad about the wrong things.
There is nothing in that 5 year old thread that goes beyond standard issue friction between someone who created something and someone who wants to administrate something.
There is stuff to be mad about, but that does not include a dev five years ago telling the memeOS "hey can you maybe please don't do this. I am worries that it will cause more work for me if you do that"
jeremyjh | 38 minutes ago
I'm not mad about anything, but I wouldn't need your permission to be so.
I've learned from this thread that I don't want to use HA in the future.
hypfer | 32 minutes ago
Who said that you would have?
someguydave | 55 minutes ago
It's not a good look taken together
Rygian | an hour ago
And the first reply being "It is not an invasion of privacy" just shows incompetence on privacy topics. It is never a valid answer.
Which is really concerning, for the lead developer of a home automation system that "fights for the fundamental principle of privacy" as per their mission statement.
nicce | an hour ago
Rygian | 52 minutes ago
Matticus_Rex | an hour ago
Rygian | 43 minutes ago
The question is what PII does HIBP collect on submission (eg IP address), and with whose consent, and for which purposes?
All that should be explained in excruciating detail in the ticket and in the documentation, to begin with.
deadbunny | an hour ago
altairprime | an hour ago
I have a great deal of sympathy for them refusing to engage; decisive software creators are far less palatable to an entitled swarm of disagreement, and that same decisiveness is what makes the best software. Perhaps in U.S. culture, refusal with a smile and a reassurance that “We’re Listening” is something folks feel entitled to, but in other areas of the world, demanding a stranger change their mind once it’s made up earns only mockery or pity. To those cultures, this GitHub is a comedy-farce, and I laughed out loud upon reading it — not because I necessarily agree with the project’s decision, but because I agree culturally with their tone and handling of what some view as blatant immaturity: a final flat refusal, closing the door, and getting back to work.
interf4ce | an hour ago
On the one hand, it's understandable. No amount of documentation changes will fix the issue.
On the other hand, it's a pretty abrasive response. It wouldn't have taken any more effort to be a little more helpful and direct OP to the right repo: "Sorry, this is the wrong place for this to be addressed. Please bring it up here instead [link]."
mcmcmc | an hour ago
csoghoian | an hour ago
balloob | an hour ago
janice1999 | an hour ago
flapperdeflip | an hour ago
Cameri | an hour ago
csnover | an hour ago
What, do you not include links to every single one of your social media accounts in every single post you make on GitHub? I think this is a very cool and normal thing, and not a concerning red flag about narcissistic tendencies at all.
deadbunny | an hour ago
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326
frenck | an hour ago
My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been. My apologies. I've posted a follow-up on the issue.
As it turns out, the check can already be turned off after all:
It has been part of the Supervisor for years and checks app options that are marked as passwords. A recent release fixed the warning that surfaces it, which is why people are noticing it now.Only the first 5 characters of a SHA-1 hash go to HIBP, and the matching happens locally: https://github.com/home-assistant/supervisor/blob/main/super...
Our documentation should have explained all of this, including how to turn it off. We'll get that updated.
doobiedowner | an hour ago
Problem solved!
>My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been
What about this one?
5kyl4b | an hour ago
frenck | an hour ago
I've used 1Password's Watchtower for so many years that I assumed the breached password check was just part of it. After your reply I looked it up and learned it's actually a setting in their privacy preferences, so my comparison was off.
../Frenck
hypfer | an hour ago
I'm not exactly sure why, but the stuff that happens tells that story (to me at least).
Barking at frenck on a Friday at 11.30PM like this is probably not the right thing to do.
frenck | an hour ago
But you are right, it is time to head downstairs for a beer with Mrs. Frenck.
../Frenck
tejtm | 37 minutes ago
jrmg | 32 minutes ago
It’s not a lie if the speaker believes it to be true; it’s just a mistake. A lie must have the intention to mislead behind it.
I don’t dispute that there is a lot of, perhaps way more, lying going on, especially in politics now, but let’s not both inflame opinions and cheapen the word ‘lie’ by just using it for non-deliberate falsehoods.
philipwhiuk | an hour ago
Some would consider the first five characters being sent over the internet to be 'your secret leaving your system'.
Some would consider phoning home to a remote server to be worrisome. It's home assistant not cloud assistant.
saghm | an hour ago
omega3 | an hour ago
I’m curious what made you change your mind, perhaps seeing this getting traction on hn?
infinite_spin | 56 minutes ago
You might have a heart of gold, and just be having an off day due to reasons, so I hope people cut you some slack, but if I were you I'd update this feature to be opt-in and conspicuous, immediately
jeremyjh | 15 minutes ago
There are a lot of problems with poor security practices devices of this type. Maybe the feature is a bit too paternalistic but it is not malicious.
I still agree its not the right default but thats quite a lot less invasive than you are making it sound.
TZubiri | an hour ago
>Sorry, these are not statements we can work with. Doing such threats and trying to intimidate it not going to bring you anywhere. If you want to do a
just wanted to add an outsider perspective here, not trying to add wood to the fire
but i don’t think it’s inappropriate or ‘a threat’ to let the dev know the user can stop using the software.
dpark | an hour ago
It was a clear attempt to sway with intimidation. It was done politely but that doesn’t change what it was. (The dev had already closed as won’t fix, too, so they had preemptively answered.)
TZubiri | 44 minutes ago
“how dare you threaten me?”
I understand how one might feel attacked by an ultimatum, but a policy of rejecting ultimatums altogether only has the benefit of keeping pride intact, on the other hand it discourages people in your life from giving you a last chance, from communicating why they are leaving, and for letting them come back if the parting was amicable
best response is to just communicate you are not fixing X and parting ways amicably, no hard feelings. not only is it beneficial for the ultimated party, but it’s fair for the ultimating party, who is absolutely in their own right to rescind their voluntary relationship, in no way is it a threat to communicate that possibility, because a threat implies violence or damage.
dpark | 33 minutes ago
Again, I did not say the threat in this case was inappropriate. It’s totally legitimate to say “this doesn’t work for me; change it or I’m out”. But it is a threat. We should be honest with what we are doing. If nothing else it makes it easier to understand (and predict) a defensive reaction when we understand and acknowledge a threat is being delivered.
TZubiri | 18 minutes ago
and it’s very common for the usage to cause conflict, the exchange of “are you threatening me?” “no, i’m just telling you what I’ll do” is very common.
i personally wouldn’t use it as a shorthand when there’s no violence or punitory damage implied, unless I purposefully wanted to escalate things. it’s a word that refers to violence, so it will harsh the vibes instantly
a key element of coercion (and this is deeply studied in law so there is less subjectivity than regular language) is that the hypothetical presented cause a damage, and then the avoidance of that damage is traded for a positive action. it doesn’t really apply to a case where a person exercises their right (to leave) and it only secondarily (or not at all) causes a damage, there is no intent to harm and no manipulation of the other into acting one way to avoid that harm.
abletonlive | an hour ago
In this case, frenck most certainly backtracked because they realized they were on the front page of HN and did not want the heat.
hypfer | 36 minutes ago
I'm torn. And sad.
thunderfork | an hour ago
Yeah, I agree with the maintainer, this strikes me as outrage theater over any actual problem, no?
jocular | an hour ago
eranation | 36 minutes ago
- Should a password manager send even one byte of my data to any service, regardless of whether it is for a good intention and mathematically proven to be "safe" without opt in? I'd say no.
- So would any other product out there, be it a smart home manager or a toaster, send any of of my data, hashed or not to any 3rd party without opt in? even if it's just the byte "1" to a page called "donothing.com"? I say hell no.
- Should open source developers who are not Linus Torvalds be a bit nicer on a public issue?
- And should open source users should be less heated because "let us know if you plan to fix this or we will uninstall and fork it" deserves the "go ahead, this is open source, threats don't really help here"
We all can sometimes write a reply at the heat of the moment that we later regret. Frenk definitely realized it after the fact and I respect him owning it, apologizing, and keeping the old messages. He is right it's open source, and he doesn't owe anyone anything, but still, I believe a phoning home of any kind is violating The Principle of Least Astonishment.
Arcuru | 34 minutes ago
eranation | 22 minutes ago
Imagine if your smart toilet would just send a small anonymized message to a urine sampling analysis service so it can let you you know your cholesterol levels are a bit high, totally anonymous, totally for your benefit. Maybe it's a great feature, but would anyone expect this to happen without consent / opt in?
someguydave | 14 minutes ago
speerer | 20 minutes ago
Insimwytim | 15 minutes ago
LargeLangMammal | 11 minutes ago
You could start with mine (https://hometruth.ai/), or just make your own. It's truly easy these days and it works much better than HA ever did for me.