"Friends" are showed on the map of the Owntracks app

[cedricdelecole]

Hello, I post it as an issue because I think this is really abnormal ... I explain.

I have installed Owntracks on the iPhone device of my child (to be integrated and used on the Home assistant - this is not working, but this is another story ...).
On the map of Owntracks, I the family members's position together with the local device' position.

I am wondering how this is possible ... so to result my child sees on his app :

• his position
• My position
• The position of his 2 sisters
• The position of my wife.

None of us were requested to allow this (we even do not have Owntracks on our Android and IOS devices)... can you please clarify if this is an issue and how can this be possible ?

Many thanks .

[jpmens]

What you are seeing is what we in OwnTracks call "Friends". This occurs because you (or whoever manages the backend you use -- here possibly Home Assistant?) have set you and your family members up to share data and thus positions on the map and in the Friends tab of the app. If you were managing your own backend (via MQTT or HTTP) you could configure this on a per/user basis. As such once again I must request you consult the Home Assistant project.

[jpmens]

None of us were requested to allow this (we even do not have Owntracks on our Android and IOS devices)

this is definitely something you should take up with Home Assistant or check in their documentation.

[cedricdelecole]

mmm I had opened a separate post as after installing the owntracks integration on Hoe assistant, and setting up the app accordingly (the HA URL and the encryption key), I saw in the HA that no device was found, and no entities created.
So that let me think that the communication between Home Assistant and the Owntracks app WAS NOT WORKING.

But now that you tell me the apparition of the "friends" on the map is probably coming from Home assistant, I a really worried ...
And the Owntracks integration documentation on Home Assistant just says nothing related to the "friends" :
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/owntracks/

I am really worried now because even in the Owntracks app if nobody is able to tell me how the hell those users are appearing, without they gve their consent, then there is an issue somewhere ;-(

[jpmens]

There are exactly two possible mechanisms by which Friends data can appear in OwnTracks:

1. a friend's location publish is coming in via a configured MQTT connection (possibly from retained data which is on the MQTT broker)
2. a friend's location is coming in via a configured HTTP connection where the backend is explicitly providing a JSON array of friends which should be use on the client app

If you have not (previously) configured 1 or 2 but now have a HomeAssitant configuration then the data must be coming via them, possibly by some older configuration done some time ago?

[cedricdelecole]

No ... I installed it couple of dzys agi, and as I said even no entities are created under the owntracks intehration on HA as it should.

I am going to disable and uninstall that directly
;-)

[jpmens]

I think this has been discussed here previously, but once again, we are probably not familiar enough with the HomeAssistant integration.

[jpmens]

I should probably also mention at this point that we've always been a bit "surprised" that HomeAssistant has not talked to us about their OwnTracks integration ... at least not as far as I recall.

[kfdm]

I should probably also mention at this point that we've always been a bit "surprised" that HomeAssistant has not talked to us about their OwnTracks integration ... at least not as far as I recall.

Seems like there is no codeowner for the integration on their side

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/5b2113c43da1d17dc09b47d23d5542d3860884cb/homeassistant/components/owntracks/manifest.json#L5

Though they do have labels to track that integration

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/labels/integration%3A%20owntracks
https://github.com/home-assistant/core/labels/integration%3A%20owntracks_http

(not suggesting this is something the Owntracks project is responsible to fix, was just curious myself so posting the links as reference)

[cedricdelecole]

Yeah ... I am a simple user of Home assistant, there are integration which are "public" I understand like for exemple the Owntracks ... and they are integrations done by individuals.