Power BI Publish to Web can be SCARY!?!

[@ItsNotAboutTheCell]

Credit to David Eldersveld for sharing the Chrome Developer trick!

[@GuyInACube]

Yes! I should have mentioned that. Thanks for calling it out!

[@havenscr]

It's absolutely one of my favorite features for public reports like the ones I embed on my website, but like you said. EASY TO FIND if people know where to look, so don't do this with sensitive data...

[@drearystate]

No, they aren't easy to find and aren't even available to anyone. Do the search yourself the results are the templates you can use. I spent 4 hours trying to find my reports on the web using evey possible search criteria and found nothing...not a single one.

[@HavensConsulting]

Maybe that was your experience. But you can’t speak for others search experiences. Glad yours aren’t discoverable though

[@GuyInACube]

Agreed. I found plenty of real reports that were not templates.

[@GuyInACube]

To your point Reid, there are definitely great cases for Publish to Web. I look at the COVID report that Microsoft has, or the Investor information that uses publish to web. all great uses.

[@kingthranduil8807]

@@drearystate I've a lot of financial reports that are published to web. Tried also searching but couldnt find anything. If in case someone has stumbled or found the report, will they be able to access our database or at least the tables? Sorry noob here.

[@jplouw8348]

If it is a public dataset/ PowerBI challenges, do we have to be concerned if we "Publish to web" for Portfolio only?

[@starkblaze1391]

OMG, you really made me go and look for Power BIs on web from my company. Didn't found anything. Thanks for the security tip 👍

[@ShopperPlug]

how can I scrape the data in the published power bi ?

[@mohank9811]

hi, is it possible to remove the paging footer from a report when embedded in a web site? (as it is possible to navigate to pages when bookmarks are implemented)

[@sandymaverick4702]

The thumbnail is meme worthy

[@GuyInACube]

Most are 😉

[@victorkonon]

Have you found a workaround to export data from a published to web page file? Currently, we are just hosting downloadable source files on our server and have a button to download a source file for a particular dashboard. However, you are downloading the whole data set. Our customers are asking for the filtered data they have on the display behind a chart or a table. :( Would a user be able to export data if the dashboard was embedded?

[@santoshraghunath8133]

Hey Adam, u r amazing. Just wanted to know which camera you use, the clarity is amazing!!

[@1yyymmmddd]

There are 3 options for sharing a report from PBI Service - "Sharepoint online", "Website or portal" and "Publish to web (public)". Are the other two safer? When I choose "Website or portal" I still get a link in app.powerbi.com somewhat similar to that what I get when I Publish to web.

[@pabeader1941]

Curbal did an expose' on this a few months ago.

[@GuyInACube]

Nice! hadn't seen that.

[@andyparkerson]

One of the reasons I didn't worry too much about Publish to Web early on was the thought that someone would have to know or guess the exact URL to find the report. Since that's almost impossible, why worry? Well, this is a good explanation of why you should worry.

[@drearystate]

Nope, it's not. The reports that google finds is templates found in the Power Bi template database, nothing more. Publish a generic one to the web and spend a day trying to find it....you won't

[@kingthranduil8807]

i searched site:app.powerbi.com and found nothing really that is concerning. I have a few published to web reports that I can't search myself

[@GuyInACube]

The big thing is Publish to Web is not secure. If you are using sensitive data with Publish to Web, you are leaking the data. Anything else is obfuscation and not security. You are at risk regardless.

[@franckoraga7621]

@@GuyInACube in the case the report is found, is there any possibility to access the dataset ? I mean tables and power view model or power query transformations ?

[@JonathanCHANAL]

I almost had a heart attack, thank you Adam! :D

[@1yyymmmddd]

Isn't it shame on Microsoft that they do not block google indexing inside their sensible site?

[@franckoraga7621]

agree with you

[@drearystate]

The google search is literally the templates on the power bi store and nothing more...Let's scare some more people.....

[@GuyInACube]

That is not a true statement. I went digging around and saw actual reports.

[@avatorl_in_a_hammock]

@@GuyInACube I believe they all are the reports indexed by search engines because URLs of these reports where published somewhere public. I didn't see any real evidence that Microsoft feeds publish to web URLs to search engines directly from Power BI Service. But for sure, any doubt should be used as an evidence of insecurity. If someone is ready to accept risks (data is not really confidential, but some minimal level of protection/obfuscation is required), then there is a way to add a simple authorization form to a Publish to Web report: powerofbi.org/2020/06/12/simple-authorization-based-on-visuals-and-dax-measures/.

[@6Mephisto666]

You know, Power BI and o365 licenses are a huge part of Microsoft's revenue. Of course a Microsoft friendly KZbinr will support their idea of scaring us.

[@franckoraga7621]

@@avatorl_in_a_hammock Tks but is it not possible to access the data once the report is published to web ?

[@franckoraga7621]

@@GuyInACube and do you have access to dataset ? or queries transformation ?

[@JonathanCHANAL]

I will certainly say something stupid ... but it seems that we must have shared this link at least once on a referenced google page (social networks, website etc ...) so that we can find it in google search. I try to reassure myself there :D

[@mattjp78]

I'm going to post this video to our PBI user's group to justify why we locked down P2W and only allow whitelisted users who have had "the talk" to do it. Thank you!