Is Your Router Spamming You? [Archive]

Ed Hansberry

11-08-2003, 04:00 PM

<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33858.html">http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33858.html</a> "The marketing geniuses at Belkin, the consumer networking vendor, have dreamed up a new form of spam - ads served to your desktop, by way of its wireless router." You can read the whole sordid thread at <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&threadm=3FA87D03.E1C44EDE%40DutchElmSt.invalid&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fselm%3D3FA87D03.E1C44EDE%2540DutchElmSt.invalid">Google Groups</a>, one an apology from Eric at Belkin. We at Belkin apologize for the recent trouble our customers have experienced with the wireless router/browser redirect issue. We unintentionally overlooked the effect this feature would have. We never intended to compromise the trust of our customers, and we never intend to do so in the future. We are taking responsibility for this, and we will be offering firmware fixes early next week. We do not have exact details yet as we are still working on them, and will continue to work on them over the weekend. What we can tell you now is that each Router's firmware that incorporates Parental Control as an option will be changed. Huh? :confused totally: "We unintentionally overlooked the effect this feature would have. We never intended to compromise the trust of our customers, and we never intend to do so in the future." How could you unintentionally overlook the effect of the feature? The intended effect was to redirect their users to a sales pitch by Belkin. Either they are colossally stupid or just poor liars. I'll not be buying any Belkin hardware anytime soon. :evil: I hope the morons that proposed and approved of this idea are collecting unemployment by now.

dma1965

11-08-2003, 04:18 PM

8O WOW!, just WOW! :?

Ed Hansberry

11-08-2003, 04:26 PM

The more I think about this, the more ticked off I am. Could you imagine if your Pocket PC was periodically redirected to the OEM's site for advertising when browsing? :2gunfire:

rfischer

11-08-2003, 04:53 PM

Well, that might explain why the Belkin I previously had was so busy all the time! I would not even be on my network and the activity lights would be flashing like crazy. It was probably out buying stuff on my credit card. :wink:

I ended up returning it for a SMC Barricade g which has been fantastic.

wocket

11-08-2003, 05:34 PM

Surley Belkin have broken some law somewhere or should compensate users at least for stealing their bandwidth.

We have just bought a load of Belkin stuff in work and I was even recomending a Belkin USB bluetooth donge to someone the orther day I will have to rethink who we buy from.

I just can't believe they have been so stupid and think that no one would have noticed.

Jacob

11-08-2003, 06:08 PM

I have a problem with them calling this a "feature" as if it's something designed to benefit the user.

"I know this feature might be misunderstood and might PO some people. I know the manual could do a better job explaining it. "

I think people do understand this feature - they just reasonably don't like it and see it as a step down a slippery slope where any company thinks it's okay to hijack a system to advertise on it.

rmasinag

11-08-2003, 07:23 PM

GUYS!

Just do this and guarranteed no spam or whatsoever

change your router's IP to 10.0.0.1

the old nonroutable ip is pretty hackable nowadays!

:mrgreen:

Dave Beauvais

11-08-2003, 07:25 PM

Just when I think marketers have sunk as low as they can possibly go, they come up with some new slimeball idea like this and manage to sink even lower.

I'm just waiting for the day when some cracker figures out a way to overwrite the firmware of routers and install some kind of malicious software on them. Many newer consumer routers are already running highly specialized embedded versions of Linux. It's only a matter of time. I can see it now... visit a Web site that installs some malicious software on your PC that then scans your LAN for a router it can mess with. If it finds one, it overwrites the router's firmware with its own code, reboots the router, and chaos ensues.

--Dave

ricksfiona

11-08-2003, 07:28 PM

I think Belkin has been a company with very solid technology. I've been very pleased with everything I have ever bought from them.

This mistake looks to be the work of a Marketing newbie and hopefully, that person will learn by this horrible mistake as well as others who were thinking the same thing.

After years of good service and solid products, I'll forgive them this time.

bdegroodt

11-08-2003, 07:29 PM

I can't believe 27% of the votes would actually be willing to even consider doing business with such a company again. It's enough of a problem from people I'd NEVER (Well, maybe if I do start getting personal performance complaints :oops: ) do business with.

szamot

11-08-2003, 07:34 PM

colossally stupid is what I am going with. I never liked their stuff and now even less.

Janak Parekh

11-08-2003, 09:31 PM

What's even more disturbing, from what I can tell, is the "opt-out" mechanism. When your HTTP connection is redirected to Belkin, and you say "don't do this again", Belkin's server actually sends a flag to your router to turn off the feature. In other words, the router has a remote hole such that Belkin can program it! 8O

This really sucks. :evil: I was a huge purchaser and supporter of Belkin products, especially their KVM switches. It's gonna be a pain to abandon it, but I'm seriously considering doing just that.

--janak

DaleReeck

11-08-2003, 11:07 PM

Overlooked the effect that this feature would have? Actually, I believe that. They overlooked the effect of how pissed off their customers would be when they found out about this "feature".

bdegroodt

11-08-2003, 11:11 PM

I have to wonder how long they expected to get away with this.

Although, for years now a certain software manufacturer has left a nice hole in the OS to allow uneducated/unsuspecting users to get spammed. Nice to see the FTC jump on the bandwagon this week. Little slow (years) on the uptake apparently. :frusty:

jimski

11-08-2003, 11:13 PM

"Never" is a such a permanent word. After reading about this I will probably think twice about purchasing Belkin products, but if they come out next week with a portable Bluetooth keyboard, I'm buyin it!

Dave Beauvais

11-08-2003, 11:23 PM

I, too, will think twice before buying or recommending Belkin products, but I won't say I will never buy anything from them. (As Janak said, some of their KVM switches rock!) I think everyone is entitled to at least one mistake. How and how quickly Belkin handles this outrageous marketing mistake will be very telling.

At this time the only company I will never purchase anything from is SanDisk.

--Dave

bdegroodt

11-08-2003, 11:29 PM

At this time the only company I will never purchase anything from is SanDisk.

--Dave

Why not? Are you on the bad side of their SD cards?

Dave Beauvais

11-08-2003, 11:36 PM

Why not? Are you on the bad side of their SD cards?
Rather than drag this thread off-topic, I'll refer you to this thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7466) and this other thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16942) where I discuss my issues with SanDisk and their SD cards.

--Dave

Ed Hansberry

11-08-2003, 11:42 PM

Although, for years now a certain software manufacturer has left a nice hole in the OS to allow uneducated/unsuspecting users to get spammed. Who?

Ed Hansberry

11-08-2003, 11:45 PM

Although, for years now a certain software manufacturer has left a nice hole in the OS to allow uneducated/unsuspecting users to get spammed. Who?
Oh, never mind. You mean this - http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/djh/200311052037DOWJONESDJONLINE001746.htm?cnn=yes

This isn't a hole, this is a 100% valid service that I use daily on our LAN. MS should have firewalls enabled by default on XP Home boxes and on XP Pro boxes, it should be a checkbox in some sort of Welcome dialog box scenario. MS is looking at both of these. It is disabled by default in Windows Server 2003 IIRC.

There is no good reason to have port 135 open to the internet anyway and blocking that port for internet (not intranet) traffic should be the default. Maybe the messenger service should be upgraded in today's broadband world to only allow domain authenticated users send/receive messages on it.

bdegroodt

11-08-2003, 11:51 PM

Although, for years now a certain software manufacturer has left a nice hole in the OS to allow uneducated/unsuspecting users to get spammed. Who?

Mister Softy. You can read more here (http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-bz.popup07nov07,0,7081331.story?coll=bal-business-headlines).

It's a good feature when used the for its intended service, but it shouldn't ship enabled or should be an option to turn off after accepting the EULA.

bjornkeizers

11-08-2003, 11:54 PM

I'm actually in the process of buyi ng a wireless card for my laptop, and the Belkin was one of the few I looked at - and I just took it off the list. Play with fire, you get burned. I understand if people don't want to do business with a company that's actively spamming their customers and putting them at risk.

bdegroodt

11-08-2003, 11:54 PM

This isn't a hole, this is a 100% valid service that I use daily on our LAN. MS should have firewalls enabled by default on XP Home boxes and on XP Pro boxes, it should be a checkbox in some sort of Welcome dialog box scenario. MS is looking at both of these. It is disabled by default in Windows Server 2003 IIRC.

Right. "It's not a bug. It's a feature." MSFT has taken a lot of heat for this for years so this recent attention isn't all it's cracked up to be.

It's really not MSFT's fault that some idiot scum spammer figured out how to use it, but they've had plenty of time to combat it.

Janak Parekh

11-09-2003, 12:22 AM

Right. "It's not a bug. It's a feature." MSFT has taken a lot of heat for this for years so this recent attention isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Agreed they've had plenty of time, but the Messenger service dates back from the early NT days, well before most machines were permanently connected to the Internet.

I personally hate having to turn it off, even for workstations, because important alert popups (like when the event log is full) are sent through it. What I'd have preferred is that MS make it only listen to localhost alerts by default, and open it up to network traffic only if a machine is joined to a domain, and even then only listen to LAN requests by default. That's a much cleaner solution.

But we're offtopic with regards to this. Let's get back to Belkin. ;)

--janak

Ed Hansberry

11-09-2003, 12:45 AM

Right. "It's not a bug. It's a feature."
Oh give me a break. :roll: It is not a feature, it is a service that has been around since the MS LanManager days (to unsucessfully combat Novell) and before Windows NT 3.1 came out. Your post was also misleading in that you were leading people to believe the FTC was taking action against Microsoft. They weren't. It is a service that is being abused and MS is taking action to stop it. It wasn't being abused when XP started shipping. As I said, 2003 already disables it by default. What more do you want MS to do? Their security page already offers a 3 step process to activate the XP firewall and directions on how to do it for 2000 and NT.

You wanna rant about MS and problems in the OS, go ahead. There are plenty of legitimate ones to rant against. But you better have your facts straight instead of spewing catch phrases. That stuff doesn't fly here.

Jonathon Watkins

11-09-2003, 12:46 AM

At this time the only company I will never purchase anything from is SanDisk.

--Dave

Why not? Are you on the bad side of their SD cards?

I certainly am. I have had a 256Mb SD card die - then the replacement 256Mb SD card AND my 1Gb CF card. :evil:

Looks like it's worth avoiding Belkin for the time being anyway......

bdegroodt

11-09-2003, 12:56 AM

Oh give me a break. :roll: It is not a feature, it is a service that has been around since the MS LanManager days (to unsucessfully combat Novell) and before Windows NT 3.1 came out. Your post was also misleading in that you were leading people to believe the FTC was taking action against Microsoft. They weren't. It is a service that is being abused and MS is taking action to stop it. It wasn't being abused when XP started shipping. As I said, 2003 already disables it by default. What more do you want MS to do? Their security page already offers a 3 step process to activate the XP firewall and directions on how to do it for 2000 and NT.

You wanna rant about MS and problems in the OS, go ahead. There are plenty of legitimate ones to rant against. But you better have your facts straight instead of spewing catch phrases. That stuff doesn't fly here.

Very nice Ed. Just the response I'd expect from a host. I think it's you that needs to get some facts straight. I'm not throwing any "catch phrases." There's been a very vocal community for YEARS requesting MSFT not ship this product that way. I'm not sure I understand your apparent anger. I said it's a feature and I meant it. You call it a service (it's technical classification), but it's a feature of the OS none the less.

It's remotely on topic as it's a spam hole (as it's being used by some) and I have my "facts" straight as the only thing I said is that the FTC is catching on to this issue and at some level MSFT is a contributor to this issue, even if certain companies use it to spam. In fact, I clearly stated that it really isn't MSFT's fault. As mentioned, there's a better way to ship the OS and configure the service as appropriate to each user. Shipping anything with open ports for services that aren't needed by a user is a very poor security policy (MSFT is working on more secure software right?).

Ed Hansberry

11-09-2003, 01:05 AM

Very nice Ed. Just the response I'd expect from a host. I think it's you that needs to get some facts straight. I'm not throwing any "catch phrases." Oh, then what is "it's not a bug, it's a feature?" I use that phrase too to poke fun at some of the bugs in software products.

It's remotely on topic as it's a spam hole (as it's being used by some) and I have my "facts" straight as the only thing I said is that the FTC is catching on to this issue and at some level MSFT is a contributor to this issue, even if certain companies use it to spam. In fact, I clearly stated that it really isn't MSFT's fault. Clearly?Although, for years now a certain software manufacturer has left a nice hole in the OS to allow uneducated/unsuspecting users to get spammed. Nice to see the FTC jump on the bandwagon this week.{shrug}

bdegroodt

11-09-2003, 01:15 AM

Oh, then what is "it's not a bug, it's a feature?" I use that phrase too to poke fun at some of the bugs in software products.

More that one way to read this. For years I sold enterprise software and I used it many times to bring attention to the fact that something that might be viewed as a "bug" isn't. Often times it's a misunderstood feature that just doesn't do what the user would expect.

Clearly?

Next time finish my quote if you're going to try to use it to support your attacks. The rest of what you left off goes:

It's really not MSFT's fault that some idiot scum spammer figured out how to use it, but they've had plenty of time to combat it.

I'll leave it at that if you will since I don't come here to argue.

Steven Cedrone

11-09-2003, 01:23 AM

Guys, we're talking about Belkin here...

Steven Cedrone
Community Moderator

Ed Hansberry

11-09-2003, 01:27 AM

Guys, we're talking about Belkin here...Who? :wink:

bdegroodt, your "clarification" was in a later post after my initial response. I got the quote right. :scatter:

kerse

11-09-2003, 02:14 AM

This doesn't suprise me at all. I once made the mistake of buying Belkin screen protectors. They kindly included 'www.belkin.com' printed on the useable area of the protector! in 10pt font that totally obstucts the ppc taskbar! :evil: Can you imagine if you bought a monitor and 'www.sony.com' was printed onto the actual screen in 30pt font. Fortunatly I discovered quite soon after the print can be removed with tea-tree oil.
I've bought 5 other brands of protectors since and none of them have had this 'feature'.
What a crappy company. They'll never see another cent out of me.

Ed Hansberry

11-09-2003, 03:22 AM

This doesn't suprise me at all. I once made the mistake of buying Belkin screen protectors. They kindly included 'www.belkin.com' printed on the useable area of the protector! in 10pt font that totally obstucts the ppc taskbar!
Fellows did this too. :? It is one thing to brand your product. This type of thing is altogether something else.

Jon Westfall

11-09-2003, 07:14 AM

Well, this probably explains why my Belkin 802.11b AP can cut out for no reason - its probably frustrated that it can't download ads as its not directly connected to the net.

Seriously, I'm so sick of companies taking decent if-it-ain't-broken-don't-mess-with-it software and adding in tweaks to make it more marketable. A prime example of this is some of the linux distributions that love to plaster ads all over their installers. Sure, linux install used to be a pain, but if I wanted pretty graphics-intensive ads (on my linux boxes, which usually have old, small, monitors since most of my work will be done through ssh), I'd install Windows on them... I guess commercialism is everywhere though (As exemplified by the "Verified by Visa" banner ad I'm looking at right now), so I guess we'll have to live with it.

As far as Windows Messenger service, I love toying with people while using it (I gotta exercise my MCSE knowledge somewhere). The other day I took great delight in sending a friend pop-ups over his LAN, then when he figured out how to send them back, a quick net stop "Messenger" fixed that problem!

ricksfiona

11-09-2003, 08:01 AM

Jonathan1

11-09-2003, 10:57 AM

Either they are colossally stupid or just poor liars.

No I'm thinking the marketing department had a little too much say in the development of the product or had the ear of a really stupid person at the top. This smells of a yes man implementation of a "feature" i.e. We don't ask questions we just do as we are told type of deal.

In any case they are going to be massively screwed over this. You don't repair your rep overnight with a little backpedaling statement. I hope they get raked over the coals by their customers over this and will stand as a testament to other companies that want to push spam on their customers.

Jonathan1

11-09-2003, 11:12 AM

You know, if people used Novell servers instead of Microsoft servers, it would cut at least 50% of the Internet traffic. Most of it being people argueing about MS software issues. Sorry, I had to throw that out there. There are still a few Novell faithful out here. :wink:

You can decrease the amount of traffic Windows generates with a little known command line command called netsh. There are a ton of optimizations features in it that aren't found in the GUI of Windows. I've seen the amount of chatter on Windows drop by 1/3 with an appropriately configured system. I personally don't know the total ins/outs of netsh but a friend who can crawl up the hind end of Windows did something that affected the system. Pre and post benchmarks have made me a believer that there is some serious behind the scenes tweaking that can be done that isn’t public knowledge. As for why MS left this undocumented :?: I’m at a loss. All I know is it works.

FredMurphy

11-09-2003, 11:29 AM

These days I almost expect software to have a marketing "feature", but hardware? 8O

Regardless of the ethics of this marketing, the problem I see is that the product no longer works properly. I'm not up on the specifics but this redirection of a http request may not actually be "harmless" replacement of a page you wanted to see with one Blekin want you to see. That http traffic could have been a call to a web service being made by an application you're running. The interference of this feature could be way more than just a marketing annoyance.

qmrq

11-09-2003, 12:23 PM

Woo, good thing I build all my routers. 8)

shawnc

11-09-2003, 04:02 PM

I probably don't have all of my facts straight here but why are most of you so willing to vilify Belkin, when their situation seems awfully close to the Viewsonic available memory fiasco. I vaguely remember them intentionally deceiving the public (IMO) with their marketing campaign about how much memory was truly available in their initial foray into the PPC arena. I think they made some lame apology (similar to Belkin) and everyone thought it was OK to kiss and make up.

I'm not defending Belkin, just curious about the inconsistency.

bjornkeizers

11-09-2003, 04:28 PM

(..) why are most of you so willing to vilify Belkin, when their situation seems awfully close to the Viewsonic available memory fiasco. (..)
I think they made some lame apology (similar to Belkin) and everyone thought it was OK to kiss and make up.

I'm not defending Belkin, just curious about the inconsistency.

Well for one, that didn't actually put consumers at risk like this does. Besides, spam is a hot topic. I don't like spam in any form, and Belkin is using our own equipment that we bought to do it, using bandwidth I pay for. In my book, that goes way beyond false advertising.. It's pure evil.

shawnc

11-09-2003, 05:26 PM

Well for one, that didn't actually put consumers at risk like this does. Besides, spam is a hot topic. I don't like spam in any form, and Belkin is using our own equipment that we bought to do it, using bandwidth I pay for. In my book, that goes way beyond false advertising.. It's pure evil.

Thanx for the explanation. Not being very technical, I didn't realize that there is some type of risk to consumers caused by Belkins behavior. I also didn't get that Belkin was actually stealing bandwidth. Though I don't agree with the logic that simply because Spam is a hot topic that Belkin should be taken to the tool shed while Viewsonic get's off with a small slap on the wrist, at least I understand why some folks feel differently about Belkin's behavior.

William Yeung

11-09-2003, 05:30 PM

I can really tell this is a deadly move. I dont wanna put them into hell because of their great and bargain hardware design afterall, but this move will *CERTAINLY* do a big push off to themselve instead of promoting... why not do a simple user registration and then ask ppl to accept perical update email which most ppl could be happy to do so with a great hardware manufacturer? cannot understand what that funny marketing guy did...

daS

11-09-2003, 05:44 PM

I can't believe 27% of the votes would actually be willing to even consider doing business with such a company again.
I will admit that I have a personal bias here (see below.) But regardless of that, I think that this showed extremely poor judgment on Belkin's part. But to condemn the entire company forevermore is a bit harsh a penalty for the actions of some stupid marketing grunt on a single product. To me this requires Belkin to acknowledge their screw up (which they did) and for them to quickly attempt to correct it (they say they are working over the weekend to release a fix.) Certainly it's fair to say that the company will need to earn back customer trust, but to issue a death sentence to them for this is a bit of an over reaction in my opinion.

There was a time when I applied the same harsh judgment to airlines: Do something to me that I felt was wrong - sometimes bordering on criminal - and I'd say "I'm never flying that airline again." But I found that every large company employs a small percentage of (strategically placed) morons. So therefore, the more I few, the greater the chance I would run into them and limit my choices of who was left that I would be willing to fly. When all that was left was Air New Zealand 8O , and they didn't fly to all the places I needed to go :wink: - it was time to give some of the other companies a second chance. So now I judge such things on patterns and how the management of the company views their customers. I think the same rules should apply in the computer industry.

Now for my bias about Belkin: The president and CEO of Belkin is an old school friend of mine. I know his character and he is one of the nicest and most charitable people I've ever known. He is a huge contributor of both his time and money to a well known youth education organization - in fact, he is their greatest benefactor in all of California to the group, and has been for many years.

This fact does not excuse the company to abuse their customers' trust, but it does make me believe that they should be given the opportunity to correct this decision and prove themselves again.

Ed Hansberry

11-09-2003, 08:18 PM

To me the difference between ViewSonic and Beklin are quite large. Viewsonic was technically correct in that the unit has 64MB of RAM. It does. Only 36MB is user available though. They clarified it on their web site and made changes on packaging/documentation.

Belkin was redirecting their customers web browsers to their parental control product site. They claimed it was a service. By that definition, every bit of spam you get is a service. :roll:

Viewsonic's issue was a documentation one. Belkin was behavioral.

kerse

11-10-2003, 06:58 AM

but it does make me believe that they should be given the opportunity to correct this decision and prove themselves again.

Nope sorry. This is a straight out security risk.
How can Bekin ever be trusted again? How will you know there isn't some nasty code hidden away in your next Belkin purchase?

Dave Beauvais

11-10-2003, 07:03 AM

How can Bekin ever be trusted again? How will you know there isn't some nasty code hidden away in your next Belkin purchase?
The same could be said of any company. How, for instance, would I know if Linksys or D-Link left back-doors of some sort in my access point or router that would allow some engineer there access to my LAN over the Internet? Without access to the firmware source code -- something none of us is likely to get -- we really have no way of knowing. Unless you have some way of monitoring every single packet of data that travels in and out of your network, it's unlikely that any of us can truly know just how secure we may or may not be. :)

--Dave

kerse

11-10-2003, 07:15 AM

The same could be said of any company. How, for instance, would I know if Linksys or D-Link left back-doors of some sort in my access point or router that would allow some engineer there access to my LAN over the Internet?

Well that's true, you cant know. The day I found out Linksys or D-Link are putting these "features" in routers, i'll stop trusting them too.

http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/464830~02139708ad2ddec7be90ecc2815a8e2e/xuf006120.gif

kerse

11-10-2003, 07:26 AM

This fact does not excuse the company to abuse their customers' trust, but it does make me believe that they should be given the opportunity to correct this decision and prove themselves again.

This is how they prove themselves. Straight up lying!

From Belkin front page:

"Important message from Belkin:
Belkin is aware of some recent postings that claim that Belkin wireless routers are spamming users during the setup process and periodically thereafter. It is not now, nor has it ever been, the policy of Belkin to intentionally spam our customers or anyone else"

This was exactly their intention. I hope they get what they deserve.

shawnc

11-10-2003, 01:55 PM

To me the difference between ViewSonic and Beklin are quite large. Viewsonic was technically correct in that the unit has 64MB of RAM. It does. Only 36MB is user available though. They clarified it on their web site and made changes on packaging/documentation.

Sorry Ed, but this is lame. Now that I understand the issue a little better I agree that Belkin was dead wrong. But to excuse Viewsonic because they were "technically correct" makes no sense to me. Their INTENT was very clear. They tried to mislead potential customers. Whenever you intend to deceive, thats a lie in my book. Technically correct or not.

Ed Hansberry

11-10-2003, 02:01 PM

Sorry Ed, but this is lame. Now that I understand the issue a little better I agree that Belkin was dead wrong. But to excuse Viewsonic because they were "technically correct" makes no sense to me. Their INTENT was very clear. They tried to mislead potential customers. Whenever you intend to deceive, thats a lie in my book. Technically correct or not.
You asked my opinion. I don't think they intentionally tried to mislead consumers. They had the first NAND device on in the PDA world AFAIK and it handles RAM differently than NOR devices do. Even "64MB" iPAQ 3900's only had 63MB of user accessable RAM yet Compaq put 64MB on the box. The NAND ROM of the V36 just took that to an extreme.

It is clear that on this issue, you and I would vote differently in a poll, though I wouldn't call those I disagreed with lame. :)

daS

11-12-2003, 12:47 AM

This is how they prove themselves. Straight up lying!

From Belkin front page:

"Important message from Belkin:
Belkin is aware of some recent postings that claim that Belkin wireless routers are spamming users during the setup process and periodically thereafter. It is not now, nor has it ever been, the policy of Belkin to intentionally spam our customers or anyone else"

This was exactly their intention. I hope they get what they deserve.

Well technically, they were not spamming, they were creating popup ads. In any case, your point was obviously noted because the current Belkin home page reads:

Important message from Belkin:
In response to a recent Usenet group posting stating that Belkin spams its customers through its routers, Belkin Corporation apologizes for the concern this has caused and is taking action to address the issue. To allay customers’ worries, Belkin will offer a firmware upgrade that will be available via download from its website (www.belkin.com) on November 17, 2003. This upgrade will rid the redirect completely so that no additional browser windows will appear during the router’s installation process. Questions can be directed to our dedicated networking customer support line at 877-736-5771 or e-mailed to [email protected].

They removed any reference that was there about policy.

To be clear about my comments here: I think what they did was stupid and wrong and clearly they will pay a price in the market. For myself, I like certain products that they make, such as their KVM switches, various cables and other items. But their network products are clearly focused on the home consumer market. As such, I have always stayed away from those products. Their customers are generally the AOL crowd that is used to popups and vendors making changes to their computers. :?