Help! my Belkin router is spamming me

Help! my Belkin router is spamming me

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.

Uh Clem. a former Belkin wireless router user, was perplexed to find machines on his network redirected to an ad for Belkin's new parental control system, following a software update. Clem initially thought that the browser setting on the machine he downloaded the updated software had been changed. But when other machines displayed the same behaviour he realised his router was to blame.

The router would grab a random HTTP connection every eight hours and redirect it to Belkin's (push) advertised web page.

'It seems the router now supports a parental control and the market droids at Belkin got the bright idea of equipping the router with intrusive nagware,' writes Uh Clem. 'Of course, I have this strange notion that routers should pass data unmolested by marketeers!'