alt Hacker News> safe on-ramp to OpenClaw
IMO I don't think the "OpenClaw has root access to your machine" angle is the thing you should worry that much about. You can put your OpenClaw on a VM, behind a firewall and three VPNs but if it's got your Google, AWS, GitHub, etc. credentials you've still got a lot to worry about. And honestly, I think malicious actors are much more interested in those credentials than wiping out your machine.
I'm honestly kind of surprised everyone neglects to think about that aspect and is instead more concerned with "what if it can delete my files."
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I think I agree here but for us it's more of a defense in depth thing. If you want to give it access to your email you are opening yourself up to attacks, but it doesn't have that access by default. We have an integration to give the agent it's own inbox instead of requiring access to your gmail for this reason. Similarly, if you want to only use Klaus for coding there is no risk to your personal data, even if your Klaus instance is hacked.
Because no one has a reliable solution to that problem. The file deletion angle is easier to advertise. "runs in a sandbox, can't touch your system" fits on a landing page, even if it's not the more important problem.