Netgear isn't (wasn't?) really low-end though. At least not priced as such. One would think they'd be making enough without having to resort to such tactics.

You're right Ubiquiti did it though and I believe their devices are priced even higher. (Edit: note the post next to mine says you can opt out of this.)

I agree replacing the stock firmware with an open-source aftermarket one like OpenWRT is the way to go but there's still the moral dilemma of supporting such practices with your wallet.

I was also thinking if this could be an attempt to thwart the second-hand market for their devices? Is the binding to the online account permanent, or maybe it requires unbinding the previous account first?

You can get a $20-40 Netgear router at Walmart.

I would posit that MikroTik is so far not doing this insanity, and price-wise is not far off from NetGear.

Nor DrayTek, AFAIK. And those are the two brands that I consistently see recommended for SOHO network gear these days. They don't have the flashy UI of something like Ubiquiti, so you do have to know what you're doing to set them up, but they seem to make reliable hardware and solid firmware.

Why can't we have network equipment that's designed from the ground up to run open source router firmwares? When my ISP gives me new networking hardware, the first thing I do is look for ways to flash new firmware on it or put it into bridge mode.

There's librerouter actually, but Is more intended for mesh network scenarios.

https://librerouter.org/

It's unfortunate that Ubiquiti is forcing telemetry on users. Having everything integrate into UniFi Controller is pretty neat. Like enough so that if I didn't already have an APU2 running pfSense, I'd very likely buy a UDM Pro despite it being immense overkill.

It's optional with Ubiquiti.

I believe it's no longer optional on the new UDM and UDM Pro devices

... but the telemetry isn't, IIRC.

Is it not? I disabled diagnostic and analytics reporting, though it does occasionally ask me to turn it back on.

Is there additional telemetry that cannot be disabled?

When they pushed the firmware, iirc the telemetry was done without notice, opted in and enabled by default, and there was no way to actually opt out until _another firmware update after the uproar_

Ubiquiti has never cared about security, if they did they wouldn't have been scammed for $40,000,000 via a literal scam email.

If Ubiquiti staff has the non-existent procedures and corporate security for this to happen, they surely don't care about your privacy or security.

They didn't scammed, they washed some of the investors money. These kind of attacks are ridiculously hard to believe.

So what is the alternative nowadays?

Got it! Thank you for that context. I'm pretty sporadic about updates so I more than likely missed the gap when it was enabled by default and not available to be disabled.

Not cool to do that :(.

I'd argue the continued "ask you to turn it on" just in the hopes that you might eventually do it to shut it up is also a terrible antipattern.