I have used openclaw pretty long but at no point it has proposed doing anything like that.

Not true. So many people love to come out of the woodwork on these openclaw posts who have no first hand knowledge of the software. It is stunning.

Since pretty much the beginning it wasn't and the documentation explicitly warned not to make it public, exposing it to the internet. It included information on how you can properly forward the gateway port to your machine without opening it up to the internet.