Web hijack riles Belkin router users
By Declan McCullagh
CNET News.com

Belkin is trying to defuse a potentially explosive situation that arose after network administrators learned that the company's wireless routers periodically hijack users' Web connection and display an advertisement for its software.

Every eight hours, a random computer that's hooked up to a wireless local area network will receive an unsolicited advertisement for a trial version of parental control software, instead of the Web page the person had hoped to visit. The behavior can be permanently disabled, but it is turned on by default in new Belkin routers when they are shipped.

A note on Belkin's Web site says that in response to a customer outcry over the weekend, the firmware will be changed in future products to disable the thrice-a-day Web hijacking. A representative for the networking gear maker told CNET News.com on Monday that Belkin was preparing a public statement that would be released later in the day.

The controversy began on Nov. 4, when a post on the Usenet newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email said the unwanted behavior appeared in a router software revision dated Sept. 15, and concluded: One thing's for sure, I'm never going to buy another Belkin product!

Scores of network administrators responded in hundreds of follow-up messages over the next several days, with many likening Belkin's decision to VeriSign's move in September to take control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names. The posts, which were primarily angry, warned that Belkin's hijacking could have unintended consequences, such as randomly breaking Web sites' JavaScript files, style sheets, internal frame pages, and Extensible Markup Language data.

Eric Deming, a Belkin product manager, defended the behavior in a follow-up post Friday that defended the practice, saying: We did this not to be evil, we did this to make sure that any nontechy person (part of our target audience) would have ample opportunity to opt in or out of the free six-month trial of the parental control feature. Deming said the behavior was added in response to popular demand and was easy to turn off.

By Monday, however, Deming's post had been deleted from Google Groups, a popular Web front end to Usenet.

Belkin sells networking products, surge protectors, cables, in addition to Universal Serial Bus, FireWire and mobile device accessories. The Compton, Calif.-based company's wireless products include an 802.11g wireless digital subscriber line or cable gateway router and an 802.11g wireless network access point. Belkin is privately held and reported worldwide sales of over $460 million in 2002.


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