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A comment on Walmart router, others on Amazon, eBay have hidden backdoors to control devices. Parent comment

Re:Walmart router, others on Amazon, eBay have hidden backdo... by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Monday November 23, 2020 @10:16PM (#25194902)
What gateway is the TV using? You can put your own router in front of the ISP one, and set your computers including your TV to use your router as the gateway, not the ISP one. Relying 100% on a third party router (where you do not control the OS) is similar relying 100% on a third party DNS provider (many PiHoles are set up to use third party DNS providers). This is willingly delegating 100% control to a third party. Some of that control can be retained if desired by using own router (with OS you can fully control), or in the case of DNS by using own DNS that you can fully control.
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Re:Walmart router, others on Amazon, eBay have hidden backdo... by syntaxing on Monday November 23, 2020 @10:38PM (#25195036)
I had to put a router in between. So the setup is piHole -> Secondary Router with PiHole as router-wide DNS --> ISP router/modem. I'm kind of tempted to just straight up buy my own modem.
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Re:Walmart router, others on Amazon, eBay have hidden backdo... by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Tuesday November 24, 2020 @02:42AM (#25196214)
If the ISP charges you a monthly fee for the modem/router (you are "leasing" the modem), and you have been a long-term customer, you may have already paid the full price of the modem; yet you do not own it.

Let's say the customer connects their own Wifi router to the ISP modem/router via Ethernet cable. There is no need for the ISP modem/router's Wifi AP. Does the ISP modem/router allow the customer to disable it?

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