3rd Party Integrations: Use main profile or create a new "driver"?

[emroch]

My R2 will be my first Rivian (and EV), so I'm looking for advice on the best practices for data collection. I have set up an account on Rivian Roamer and also installed the (Unofficial) Rivian Home Assistant integration.

Both of these have account linking guides that mention creating a secondary driver profile for linking the integration. It sounds like this won't impact the data collection or functionality of either integration, but I'd like to confirm that.

What are the real risks/tradeoffs for using my primary account vs a backup account?

• CON: cluttered vehicle UI showing extra "drivers"
• CON: more emails/passwords to keep track of
  • I own my own domain and use a password manager, so its won't be an issue to create email aliases or unique passwords, its just more stuff to manage.
• PRO?: If Rivian retaliates against unauthorized use of the API, my main account presumably won't be affected.
• PRO?: If RR or HA are somehow compromised, my main account would be safe.
  • Seems like neither integration stores my password, so the only leak would be a temporary login token.
  • Is this actually a valid concern? Is there other PII that could be leaked that a compromised dummy account would not also leak?

What are other folks doing? Is it common to set up a dummy account? If so, should I create separate ones for RR and HA, or just have one fake account?

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[Rivian Roamer]

My R2 will be my first Rivian (and EV), so I'm looking for advice on the best practices for data collection. I have set up an account on Rivian Roamer and also installed the (Unofficial) Rivian Home Assistant integration.

Both of these have account linking guides that mention creating a secondary driver profile for linking the integration. It sounds like this won't impact the data collection or functionality of either integration, but I'd like to confirm that.

What are the real risks/tradeoffs for using my primary account vs a backup account?

• CON: cluttered vehicle UI showing extra "drivers"
• CON: more emails/passwords to keep track of
  • I own my own domain and use a password manager, so its won't be an issue to create email aliases or unique passwords, its just more stuff to manage.
• PRO?: If Rivian retaliates against unauthorized use of the API, my main account presumably won't be affected.
• PRO?: If RR or HA are somehow compromised, my main account would be safe.
  • Seems like neither integration stores my password, so the only leak would be a temporary login token.
  • Is this actually a valid concern? Is there other PII that could be leaked that a compromised dummy account would not also leak?

What are other folks doing? Is it common to set up a dummy account? If so, should I create separate ones for RR and HA, or just have one fake account?

From a security standpoint there isn't much different. You cannot control a vehicle without pairing a key which requires your own action to accomplish. At any point you can invalidate all generated tokens via the sign-in process by changing your password. Not only that, even if your password were somehow compromised (most, if not all 3P services never store your password)... it still requires 2FA to sign in.

It comes down to mostly convenience. Using your primary account means one password to track, you get vehicle delivery dates and future enhancements that only the "Primary owner" has access to.

The primary risk is throttling. Rivian limits the numbers of connected clients by account. So you could in theory impact your primary app account if you start signing up to a bunch of services. I don't know what the exact limit is.

Rivian Roamer specifically is deeply optimized to support Rivian App + RR without impact. Beyond that is unknown.

 

[emroch]

Thanks, Chad!

The primary risk is throttling. Rivian limits the numbers of connected clients by account. So you could in theory impact your primary app account if you start signing up to a bunch of services. I don't know what the exact limit is.

What would this look like? API requests being rejected? App functions failing to load?

Sounds like there are more pros than cons to keep RR on the primary account. Unless anyone else has feedback about the HA side, I'll probably start with my main account there too and keep an eye out for issues.

 

[Rivian Roamer]

Thanks, Chad!

What would this look like? API requests being rejected? App functions failing to load?

Sounds like there are more pros than cons to keep RR on the primary account. Unless anyone else has feedback about the HA side, I'll probably start with my main account there too and keep an eye out for issues.

Yeah, subtle failures in the Rivian app though they're generally transient.

Rivian Roamer also offers an easy transfer mechanism to switch accounts if you ever to decide to.

 

[therealcmj]

What would this look like? API requests being rejected? App functions failing to load?

Sounds like there are more pros than cons to keep RR on the primary account. Unless anyone else has feedback about the HA side, I'll probably start with my main account there too and keep an eye out for issues.

I use HA and have an R1S and a Rivian charger. I had endless problems with my phone app not working - it would constantly report "No cloud connection" or something like that. DIsabling the HA integration fixed it.

So I'm redoing it with a separate account to avoid those problems.

Unfortunately Rivian doesn't have an official API, doesn't seem to publicly list anything anything about rate limits, and doesn't allow for scoped access tokens (e.g. read only access. So the information is all anecdotal.

 

[Zevo]

Rivian Roamer also offers an easy transfer mechanism to switch accounts if you ever to decide to.

Does that migrate all historical data as well, effectively making it seamless? Btw, really appreciate your level of activity and transparency on this. It makes it much easier to comfortably use what you have built.

 

[Rivian Roamer]

Does that migrate all historical data as well, effectively making it seamless? Btw, really appreciate your level of activity and transparency on this. It makes it much easier to comfortably use what you have built.

Correct. Rivian Roamer handles everything for you, from your end the only thing that changes is the source account.

 

[Zoidz]

I have been using the Rivian integration for HA for over a year. I set up a separate account. The only benefit I can see to not using a separate account is having only one account to manage. I chose to avoid any headaches that might arise from sharing my primary account with the HA API calls. The authentication for that account will at some point time out, just like the primary does, and HA will stop communicating to Rivian, so you do have to log in occasionally.

 

[emroch]

Thanks @therealcmj and @Zoidz. Sounds like HA is maybe not as optimized for sharing the API quota as RR is. So while it ends up being okay to use your primary account with RR, a separate HA account is probably the better choice.

This seems like a fair middle ground to me. I wasn't keen on having 3 separate accounts/driver profiles, but I'm okay creating a HomeAssistant-specific one to work around a known limitation.

 

[Rivian Roamer]

I use HA and have an R1S and a Rivian charger. I had endless problems with my phone app not working - it would constantly report "No cloud connection" or something like that. DIsabling the HA integration fixed it.

So I'm redoing it with a separate account to avoid those problems.

Unfortunately Rivian doesn't have an official API, doesn't seem to publicly list anything anything about rate limits, and doesn't allow for scoped access tokens (e.g. read only access. So the information is all anecdotal.

After handling over 3,000 support emails. The most common support request was people asking why Rivian Roamer was saying their password was wrong when refreshing connections. In every instance it was them forgetting they used a secondary account even though I communicate the Rivian username very predominantly.

 

[Zoidz]

After handling over 3,000 support emails. The most common support request was people asking why Rivian Roamer was saying their password was wrong when refreshing connections. In every instance it was them forgetting they used a secondary account even though I communicate the Rivian username very predominantly.

Your mistake was expecting that people would actually read the entirety of your tech support response.

 

[Rivian Roamer]

Your mistake was expecting that people would actually read the entirety of your tech support response.

I had to make a big red warning if you try to enter your Rivian password and it fails that's like ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE ENTERING THE PASSWORD FOR [email protected]?!

Support emails went to near zero for this topic.

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