ASUS rolled out an update to its firmware (3.0.0.6.102_34791) that now requires users to be over the age of 16 and to send a slew of metrics and data back to ASUS. If you do not agree or do not check the box to verify you are 16y or older, you cannot use the router. At this time, I’m not sure if ASUS has meant to disable the router for anyone under 16 or if it’s a bug.
You can opt out at any time but lose access to a slew of features:
Please note that users are required to agree to share their information before using DDNS, Remote Connection (ASUS Router APP, Lyra APP. AiCloud, AiDisk), AiProtection, Traffic analyzer, Apps analyzer, Adaptive QoS, Game Boost and Web history. At any time, users can search the contents of the terms at this page or stop sharing their information with other parties by choosing Withdraw.
Moreover, ASUS disables automatic firmware updates and worse, all security upgrades unless you opt into the data sharing. Security upgrades perform the following:
Security upgrade incorporates security measures that continuously update its security file and scans to protect against malware, malicious scripts, and emerging threats in order to secure the router and ensure system stability. Some upgrades addressing important security issues or meeting legal/regulatory requirements will still be downloaded and installed automatically, even if “Security Upgrade” is turned off.
Edit: I have personally contacted their CEO’s office, but if others would like to voice their disapproval as well, here is a link: https://www.asus.com/us/support/article/787/
Nasty. Thanks for the heads up.
NP. I was pretty pissed as they haven’t released a new update in almost a year and when they did, this is all that’s been changed.
Good news is moving to WRT Merlin is a piece of cake and even carries over all your original settings. Hopefully they rip out this crap with their own firmware.
I wanted to swap over to Merlin last year but my router isn’t supported. Grrrr!
Same :(
The title could use the word “router” somewhere.
New ASUS firmware now requires a user to be 16y or older router and will restrict features and even security upgrades if you opt out
Like that?
Wow thanks I never could have figured that one out myself!
New ASUS firmware now requires a user to be 16y or older router and will restrict features and even security upgrades if you router out
Missed a spot.
Fr. Had me thinking ASUS Motherboards. Really had me going there😅
They are next 🫠
Done 🙏
Asus would do good in hiring a real lawyer. Parents accept, kid uses router, data collected of child, illegal. So easy to rip them a new one.
If I bought one of their routers and this came up, I would simply be returning it and giving the person at the counter a printout as to why. Sorry, but this router is not “suitable for purpose”. Look up that phrase and “merchantability”.
Agree. Straight back for refund. In Australia we can legally choose the manufacturer, or the retailer. I’d go straight to Asus, to give them the message directly.
Trying to refund through Asus will result in them dragging their feet, being as unhelpful as possible, or claiming you damaged the product.
Which will result in federal agencies going straight up their arse.
Many countries outside the US have actual consumer protections
I would hope so, but Asus has been doing things like this for at least 10+ years which makes me doubtful that anything will change soon.
I’ve been down that road with Samsung. One mention of our consumer laws, with a link to the contact form where I can report them, and refund issued immediately. Australia has good laws. People just need to flex em.
For the downvoters, in the US:
https://www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/what-is-the-warranty-of-merchantability.html
The implied warranty of merchantability guarantees that a product sold to you will work for its intended purposes. In other words, it means you can expect a toaster to toast your bread. If it doesn’t, you have legal protection against losing money on a product that doesn’t work.
If you bought the router expecting it to work as advertised, you may make a claim if it doesn’t. They would have to spell out ahead of time what the limitations and requirements are in order to avoid trouble.
You have no claim. The update does not disable the router and even if you opt out, the router itself still functions, except with a few additional features missing. Telemetry and data collection does not void a warranty. There is no claim here.
Protecting your network from internet-bound threats is one of the most important jobs of a router, and that involves receiving security updates. Once your router no longer receives security updates, you should stop using it.
That would be for the legal system to decide. If you purchased it for a specific advertised feature, and that feature was disabled unless unspoken terms were agreed to, you would have a case.
I would rather not have less options in this world and force companies not to be dicks. I guess to each their own. My router is also 2y old so no returns available.
openwrt is pretty nice
Unfortunately, lots of ASUS routers (especially the “gamer” oriented ones) use Broadcom chipsets. Broadcom support is severely lacking, (because Broadcom has refused to allow open source drivers) so in many cases switching to openwrt will severely cripple the router. Even basic shit like WiFi will stop working, because there isn’t a WiFi driver available.
Fresh tomato does Broadcom.
this is dissapointing. the enshitification of asus in general has been dissapointing…
I guess I’m not updating my routers anymore then. Sucks though. It seemed to be the only Asus product that wasn’t garbage.
Look into OpenWRT. It is more complex to setup but it is a Swiss army knife.
That sucks too because you miss out security fixes. I would rather run a secure and up to date firmware that leaks data to ASUS than one with known security exploits. If those were my only options.
I’d rather update it as well. But the routers are behind my ISP router and aren’t externally accessible. The attack surface is smaller in that regard. I’m not happy with the thought of an unpatched router. Maybe I can hold out long enough for merlin to support my routers.
I dont think the latest few updates I did mentioned any security updates. Only bugfixes.
I’ll tackle the problem when it presents itself I guess.
I’m sure asuswrt-merlin won’t have this nonsense.
Routers aren’t supported by merlin unfortunately :(
Do you mean modems?
Fantastic. Time to deliver opnsense and/or pfsense to the masses. Or better, recycle a router with openwrt or similar
Is Asus just asking to have a shitload of lawsuits?
How many 14 year olds can afford a lawyer?
No need, they can just lie :)
All you need is one lawyer in this case to handle the class action lawsuit that would follow. There is power in numbers.
A class action lawsuit with a related FTC warranty fraud investigation is a pretty tough thing to fight.
Yes.
It doesn’t seem like they give a shit. This is the company that strong armed NexusGaming with their repairs and have scammed a slew of people thru their warranty system.
If you search for “ASUS repair scam” they have a sorted history of this kind of douchery.
And in return Gamers Nexus is teaching all of their viewers what their consumer rights are, and how to report fraudulent activity to the proper regulatory authorities. This isn’t the first time Gamers Nexus has gotten regulatory agencies involved with computer part manufacturers fucking over customers, and the history of those incidents didn’t go very well for other companies involved.
On the other hand Gamers Nexus has also gone out of their way to point out companies that have done the right thing when issues came up, to make sure those companies are getting kudos for NOT fucking over consumers. Because sadly that’s all we really want.
If the FTC gets enough complaints to warrant the manpower to investigate ASUS warranty fraud, there is no doubt in my mind that they’re gonna be fucked based on what we’ve seen so far.
Watching the GN video was insane because I had that exact same experience with ASUS 10 years ago. Back when they made the Nexus 7. I had to RMA 3 of those dam things and each time I had to go through that song and dance with the RMA forms. I think when the 4th one failed I just gave up, recycled it, and moved on from this company as a whole.
Looks like nothing’s changed, which means this way of treating their customers is endemic at this point. They’re a lost cause.
That’s brutal that they get away with that crap. I will never buy anything ASUS branded again. They are on my embargo list now, right under Sony, which I haven’t purchased a single thing from them for about 18 years since they screwed me out of repairs on my phone. Only way IMO.
My experience was similar, but I gave up after my first RMA because I saw everyone else going through the same thing. The N7 started as such a delight and ended up as one of worst product experiences.
I think the word you’re looking for is “sordid”.
Sometimes I take spellcheck for granite.
It’s a slippery slope.
Wait, that’s not a typo…
Neither are mine. Grammatical mistakes are not typos.
I mean if you’re using their servers for all of that cloud management can you really expect them not to take a look? You can buy a router and install open source firmware that doesn’t scrub your data or keep giving money to giant corporations that put profits over customers.
Removed by mod
Top level comment to remind the Open WRT fanboys that this ASUS router uses a Broadcom chipset, which is not supported on OpenWRT. Been seeing it recommended by a lot of replies to comments when it won’t be helpful in this case, since Broadcom chips don’t have open drivers
However, freshtomato is another router firmware, that isn’t as feature rich or well supported as opwnwrt, but is focused on supporting broadcom chipsets.
https://wiki.freshtomato.org/doku.php/hardware_compatibility
I flashed it to my netgear router with a broadcom chipset, it works wonderfully!
Yeah I’ve stayed out of those because it’s just felt like a knee jerk without actually even reading anything. “Someone said something critical about a router firmware, quick put OpenWRT on blast!” 😏
Should I need a new motherboard, which vendor would you guys recommend that’s not crap (as a company)? Gigabyte? GamersNexus had a few very negative reports on MSI as well.
Yeah gigabyte is solid. I was quite happy with the Aorus line up. I have never bought MSI because I’ve always felt them to be cheap and dodgy. So not surprised NG was having issues with them.
I hate gigabyte with a passion. The 980Ti Gaming G1 has explosion issues (literally) including mine and some other people. They didn’t step up. Then there’s the PSU debacle. There was an r/fuckgigabyte for a reason. I think just AsRock is left?
IMO, ASRock.
Considering that they’re probably the only mobo manufacturer that officially supports using consumer AM4 CPUs on a server (see ASRock Rack), and always supported ECC ram on all AM4 motherboards - and that I haven’t had anything negative happen with any of their products so far (at work) - I personally would choose ASRock next.
Haven’t had the chance to try them for AM5 yet, sadly.
never use stock router firmware
Any other open source alternative you recommend?
openwrt
openwrt or ddwrt
Usually it’s OpenWRT
There is also FreshTomato if your router has Broadcom wifi chipset like mine does.
Broadcom sucks I would avoid it at all costs.
On ASUS routers, the best choices are OpenWRT or Asuswrt-Merlin.
You know, I’d 99% of the time agree with you but has anyone else tried out the little (travel?) routers from GL-iNet?
Their default router interface ain’t half bad at all, and if you do need to use Luci you can simply do that too
I bought a couple of them for a family member and they haven’t poked me once for help with them.
i dont blame you. GL-inet routers have always seemed so cool to me. always wanted to get one.
paired with the blue merle firmware it would be a godlike setup
https://github.com/srlabs/blue-merle
but i think blue merle is not being maintained anymore… is there any other firmware with similar functionality? like imei rotation, mac randomizer, etc? that you know of, even for similar hardware
Fraid not.
I recall worrying about MAC address tracking one time and using Chainfire’s MAC privacy app, but that’s a non factor now since they’re randomised by default on Android on the most recent versions.
If anyone is looking for an alternative firmware, check out Fresh Tomato: https://freshtomato.org/
Asus went the bad way. Check out louis rossman vídeos about asus, héroes one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHQqKi9NcTs It is a company to be avoided. It went the non ethical way.
It went the non ethical way.
Sadly, you can swap Asus with pretty much any popular company’s name and it still holds true.
Gamers nexus mentioned two decent brands (arctic and fractal) in their most recent video about Asus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYdtpU8FKO8 around the 11:11 mark
But yes, sadly most popular companies seem to be garbage nowadays.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=uYdtpU8FKO8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=NHQqKi9NcTs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Every other company seems to charge for parental controls. It’s so stupid, I don’t need another fee just because I have a child in my life.
I wanted to degoogle, so I looked for a new router and ended up with an Asus.
