One of two things happened:
- They implemented it just now, and it's nice of them to ask
Or:
- They've been doing it for years, and now legal told them they need to ask
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Privacy
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It's always #2
Weird, I must be seeing a different screenshot, because all I read here is "TP Link would like you to overwrite its firmware with OpenWRT."
Hold up. Since when can you put OpenWRT on non linksys routers??? I stopped following the project years ago when i stopped using linksys routers. Have they expanded their repertoire?
I've been using it for 10+ years on a combination of Netgear, TP-Link and Raspberry Pi hardware, so at least that long?
The last time I engaged with OpenWRT was around 2010 so that tracks.
I've never personally used that one, but it gets recommended a lot.
I've been using DD-WRT for 15+ years, but that's for no particular reason other than It's what I found first and haven't had any reason to switch.
I used DD-WRT for 9 years and had no reason to switch until I was forced to. At some point after a firmware upgrade my routers began to occasionally lose their configurations after power failures. Months of troubleshooting, logging errors and recreating configs made no difference. I had been concerned for some time that the project seemed to rely on one guy, and although what he's doing is amazing, it is not possible for him to thoroughly test each firmware release. When one of my routers lost its config when I was 200 miles away and I lost alarm monitoring I was forced to make a change.
Open-WRT has been a really pleasant surprise. It's completely stable on the same routers and the feature set is unbelievably broad. The learning curve was a bitch though.
My story is very similar. I used DD-WRT for years until something broke. Then I switched to OpenWRT and never looked back. That was maybe ten years ago.
I'm using openwrt and it's great
I was on DD-WRT back when WRT54G but the DD-WRT devs don't really get it,
They make the bad compromises, and most of their initial contributors appears to have moved on to OpenWRT.
At this point DD-WRT isn't just another alternative, it's very stale while OpenWRT is still evolving rapidly and has the larger contributor community. And they put as much emphasis on performance, bloat reduction and efficiency as they do new features.
I have a 8MB nvram TP link archer C7 and it's actually faster in the latest version, that's basically unheard of in all of software !
This is incredibly helpful to know - cheers mate
Maybe Later
I hate it here
shares it anyway
Rapist's mentality.
We won't save your private information. But the third party services - some of which are owned by the same parent company as us - absolutely will.
We won't save it, but we will pass it along to whoever gives us money.
Any chance of something like OpenWrt?
Slap OpenWRT on that little trojan horse.
Maybe later
Fuck off to hell with this shit
It's the rapist mentality, they won't accept "no" as an answer.
I love how they say they won't save your private info, but nothing about whether the third party will
i have always wondered how this works from the legal point. what if you disagree, should you sue to get your money back? you are buying product with some expectations, they can't just change that after you paid, can they?
it is similar with cars, what if you buy new car and the car's infotainment asks you to accept some outrageous terms and conditions, you do bother to actually read them and then decline. can you get your money back? has anyone ever tried?
…a third-party services…
Now, what is it, one or many!?
Yes!
Yes
Cooool. Anyone know how to deaden this behavior?
Don't use their software, use something like openwrt
Well, TP Link have never been trustworthy. Cheap and trustworthy rarely exist together.
I have the best smart plugs I could acquire - Kasa brand. They're great adapters, but the moment their API call doesn't get a response from their servers, they restart themselves every ten minutes. We all have to make some sacrifices in the journey to net security and independence, and keeping their API unblocked is one of mine.
If anyone wants smart plugs for monitoring purposes the Kasa brand is operable without the TP-Link app. Tapo is far worse. Never go full Tapo.
Kasa is owned by TP Link
I have kasa switches and everything is blocked on my firewall so they can't phone home.
Overall they function fine. But I have 1 pesky switch that is constantly in a disconnected state (red light) no matter what I do. Every time I reconnect it it disconnects not too long later. It functions fine though, possibly because its a 3 way and the paired switch is fine.
I have another set of 3 way switches that have disconnected a few times but reconnecting them works just fine for a long while (years).
So my questions are, that pesky red light switch sounds kind of like your situation. When you say they reset themselves, do the lights go red?
Secondly, yours reset every 10 minutes? Most of mine seem fine. I'm not sure what's different between our setups.
I haven't seen the lights go red, only off, then orange, then green if they were already on.
Of my KP105 and KP115 plugs, only one has misbehaved, only once when their server was unreachable. The main culprit is the Kasa 303 I think it's called? The 3-outlet adapter.
They are great devices! But I'm waiting for a Zigbee or Matter alternative with energy monitoring so these can be swapped out
Gotcha. So with a few exceptions they overall seem perform well across the board.
Once upon a time I dreamed of switching them all out for something better, and was actually looking forward to Tapo with matter support.
But for my uses I'm basically pulling the plug. My switches are smart enough. I can do schedules, profiles, and control with the app.
I don't need more than that and there's not really a privacy focused option as far as I know. Blocking internet is my solution to keep things contained.
Yup, bought a bunch of TP-Link mesh towers. Turns out that they take down the whole WiFi when the main node looses internet connection. That's just not acceptable, I might have an unstable internet connection but still want access to my local devices, such as my streaming server or router.
On that node, does anyone know of a brand of mesh towers that can survive unstable/no internet connections and don't use custom firmware? DD-WRT works just fine, but I'm not gonna flash custom firmware onto friends' devices.
Wouldn't you be helping them?
Well, thats a shame. I have always preferred TP-Link due to their pricing and freedom of software/smart home integrations. This definitely puts a damper on that.
What router do you have? I have the TP-Link Omada ER7212 and am not seeing this on the latest firmware
Archer AX11000
I doubt something like this will spillover to the professional line of products. We should be clear for a while with Omada.
I stopped using TP Link stuff after read a few articles on their significant security issues having something to do with their Chinese ownership, and back doors or something. It’s too bad, as far as usability and reliability, they were way better than the Netgear and Asus is have now.
Time to learn how to set up OPNsense.
Or in my case, pFsense, but yeah...that's the way.
My router (WiFi v.6) has an inbuild Firewall
Asus and Merlin forever