Are there any telemetry concerns with Asuswrt-Merlin ?

[Denna]

Do Asuswrt-Merlin users have telemetry concerns to deal with like Netgear users do ?

https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/netgear-router-analytics-data.html​

 

[thelonelycoder]

I highly doubt @RMerlin collects data for any reason at all.
The only data exchanged are for the firmware update notification function and if I remember correctly, this only contains the router model and _maybe_ the currently installed firmware version.
As for Asus, I would have no idea. But looking at the dnsmasq logs I see no evidence of them doing so on Merlin firmware.

 

[joegreat]

Do Asuswrt-Merlin users have telemetry concerns to deal with like Netgear users do ?

https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/netgear-router-analytics-data.html​

No Asus-WRT/Merlin does not do this kind of spying on their user - a good reason to switch to Asus, no?

I would be for me, if I would not be already there for years!

 

[RMerlin]

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Privacy-disclosure

At the time I write this, I don't even get your IP address, since the update server sits behind a CDN provider.

 

[Atarii]

ASUS firmware (and therefore Merlin) does do regular DNS probes to dns.msftncsi.com (owned by Microsoft). You can disable this by:

nvram set dns_probe_content=0.0.0.0
nvram set dns_probe_host=""
nvram commit
reboot

From: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/excessive-requests-for-dns-msftncsi-com/556/6

Not that this is really telemetry data

 

[RMerlin]

ASUS firmware (and therefore Merlin) does do regular DNS probes to dns.msftncsi.com (owned by Microsoft). You can disable this by:

nvram set dns_probe_content=0.0.0.0
nvram set dns_probe_host=""
nvram commit
reboot

From: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/excessive-requests-for-dns-msftncsi-com/556/6

Not that this is really telemetry data

This is used by the firmware to determine if there is an active Internet connection (in the past, they would ping a list of random DNS servers - using the Microsoft DNS that's designed for such a purpose is cleaner and safer). This can also be disabled through the webui under Tools -> Other Settings since 380.66.

 

[Denna]

This is used by the firmware to determine if there is an active Internet connection (in the past, they would ping a list of random DNS servers - using the Microsoft DNS that's designed for such a purpose is cleaner and safer). This can also be disabled through the webui under Tools -> Other Settings since 380.66.

@RMerlin,

Is this part of the Wanduck process ?​

 

[thelonelycoder]

@RMerlin,

Is this part of the Wanduck process ?​

Yes