Home Speaker access: who exactly is "everyone" - and how?

[nabla]

Hi there,

we experience some issues configuring multi-room AirPlay from my iMacs' iTunes (still running Mojave, latest iTunes there) to our new HomePod minis [*]. Following numerous tutorial websites on "how to solve Airplay woes", I found that I do get a reliable connection as soon as I configure Speaker/TV access in the Home app to allow "everyone".

While I (hope I) understand the other two options (users in the same network, or users in my Home), I do not really get who exactly is "everyone" then. I do understand that "everyone" literally sounds pretty alarming for any access control option.

Hence my questions:

• Does "everyone" include our neighbors living above us, or people outside on the street, who have never been within our network, never been invited to our HomeKit setup, and never seen anything of our HomePods?
• If yes, how exactly would they access the speakers – how would they even see the speakers on their devices?

It seems like checking the (6-digit) password option has our iMac fail again at connecting, so that does not seem to be an option for us.

Thanks for any insights to the "everyone" option...

nabla


[*] Otherwise, the new HomePod minis seem to be reliably connected to our wifi. Siri works, playing radio streams works, and also sending streams from one HomePod to another via Siri commands is flawless. The issue is only with Airplay from the Mac.