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Belkin To Offer Firmware Fix For Router Hijacking

L-Train8 writes "Belkin has an announcement at the bottom of their homepage about the spam router. They have decided to disable the 'feature' that hijacks a random http request every 8 hours and redirects to a webpage advertising their parental control system. This will require a firmware upgrade. The message says details will be forthcoming. Interestingly, while I was preparing this submission, the message changed. Originally, it included a snippy remark about how what they were doing was not spam, despite what everyone on the internet says. The new version is much less testy."

10 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. lemme guess... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Every 8 hours you get redirected to a page saying "Sorry, we won't do it again. Promise."

  2. Re:"anonymous usage statistics?" by Xenographic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't worry.

    They'll think of something else that's worse, more intrusive, etc. every eighteen months or so.

    I hereby dub this law to be known as "Xeno's law"

    The first corollary is that the average IQ of marketers is thought to be a monotone decreasing function which tends to zero.

  3. Re:I've got a fix... by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Funny
    Err, I get your point, but really... "what's a web interface?". Why would they be buying a router if they don't know what the web is?

    The web? Isn't that like AOL?

    Sorry, that was too easy. I should probably lose some of my cynicism :P It's been reinforced too much by end users.

    In all seriousness though, I think "web interface" would confuse them, whereas if you said "We are going to a special webpage in Internet Explorer" or something along those lines you'd have better luck. Or maybe not. Never underestimate the stupidity of an end-user....

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  4. Re:original message text by Humba · · Score: 5, Funny

    We apologise for the fault in the router. Those responsible have been sacked.

    Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretty nasti...

    We apologise again for the fault in the router. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

    --Humba

  5. Re:"anonymous usage statistics?" by Kwil · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yet in order to decrease to 0, it first must decrease by half.

    In order to decrease by half it first must decrease by half of that.

    In order to decrease by half of that, it must first decrease by half of that, and so on.

    So it would seem that the IQ can never actually decrease at all.

    This would imply that the IQ must start at 0.

    You could call this something spiffy.. Xeno's Paradox maybe. :)

    --

    That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze

  6. Unemployed? Want a job? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Funny


    In case you would like to apply for Mr. Deming's job, it's available. (Scroll down to "Marketing Manager"). Or, just write careers@belkin.com.

    Of course, Belkin won't accept just anyone. The "right candidate" must be able to "strategize, initiate, and execute". He or she must be able to "drive revenue" and "leverage knowledge" about "end-user sell-thru strategies" and must be able to "align resources" and "translate raw content".

  7. Re:"anonymous usage statistics?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    Yet in order to decrease to 0, it first must decrease by half.

    Ignoring Newton makes Baby Jesus cry.

  8. Re:"anonymous usage statistics?" by rnturn · · Score: 4, Funny

    ``With no IQ, I think they'd act totally randomly and, therefore, would have to do something smart from time to time, even if the probability of such an act were very small.''

    Brownian Intelligence?

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  9. Re:D-Link PnP by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thank you.

    I just wish there was a more adequate explanation of UPnP in the manual. Here's a copy of it, taken directly from the manual:

    "UPnP is short for Universal Plug and Play which is a networking architecture that provides compatibility among networking equipment, software, and peripherals. The DI-604 is a UPnP enabled router and will only work with other UPnP devices/softwares. If you do not want to use the UPnP functionality, it can be disabled by selecting "Disabled".

    It should read:

    "Leaving this stupid fucking feature on leaves you bent-over and spread-cheeked for when a piece of malicious software comes along decides block every damn port on our router. UPnP allows changes to be made without your knowledge OR consent--it allows any program to totally bypass user/admin authentication. As an added bonus, entries commited via this backdoor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"feature" cant' be removed without first factory-defaulting the whole goddamn router and rebooting it. Anyway, Microsoft wants us to put it here and leave it on by default. Click the box to disable it."

    I think my explanation is much clearer, don't you? :)

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  10. Most Smoking Crack Operation? by heironymouscoward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Instant poll:

    Who smoked the most crack in 2003?

    (_) SCO
    (_) Belkin
    (_) Verisign
    (_) CowboyNeal
    (_) *A
    (_) All of the above

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