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Forum Discussion
Armor subscription not worth renewing
I have been paying for Armor since I bought the Orbi RBR50 mesh over 3 years ago, and I've recently updated my system to the RBR860 that came with a month-long trial version of Armor, but I'm not convinced it's worth continuing this on despite a 50% discount offer for the following reasons - some are long standing issues for 2-3 years now:
(1) I cannot transfer the current subscription that runs through to Feb 2025 on the retired RBR50 to the new RBR860. I have to purchase a new plan for the 860. Netgear and Bitdefender support have not been able to achieve this transfer, potentially made difficult by the fact the RBR is warranty registered under any Telco/ISP, although the satellites I purchased are warranty registered under my account.
(2) Long standing bug: Armor regularly (almost daily) thinks the iOS devices running the Orbi app do not have notifications enabled. Then randomly thinks they have, then a day or so later thinks they haven't. This results in a reduced security score.
(3) Long standing bug: Armor is installed and running on the iOS devices and providing the Bitdefender web protection, yet Armor on the Orbi thinks all the iOS devices are unprotected, resulting in a much reduced and meaningless security score. The iOS end point protection is still providing protection which is some benefit. It's just the Orbi app and its Armor cloud or app side API can't detect this. It's not related to iOS private addressing - this makes no difference. This has been an issue for almost 3 years now, rendering Armor cosmetically inoperable for iOS devices as far as the Orbi app is concerned. MacOS is fine and has been all along. For an all-Apple household, Armor is somewhat pointless with all the cosmetic issues.
(4) Long standing limitation: Armor gives meaningless and vague vulnerability alerts for devices such as Raspberry Pi and other Linux/Debian systems, with no details about the CVE, despite the Pi devices being up to date. The detail Armor gives is "This vulnerability is one of several less common types found by Armor. You are protected and don't need to do anything." Thanks but at least give me the CVE or config weakness so I can at least harden my Pis. I've had this vague alert for other smart home devices as well. This also results in a reduced security score, sometimes they all aggregate to a high risk rating for my network.
(5) The Armor web console is not very useful in terms of being able to bulk delete old devices or troubleshoot the issues above.
So unless someone can convince me otherwise, I'm probably not going to keep paying Netgear and Bitdefender to sit on what are significant bugs and limitations bugs for 3 years. Their marketing should clearly state the product does not provide all or full features for iOS devices. I believe this may be the case for Android as well.
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FURRYe38 Thanks for that. The problem I have is my original Armor subscription has technically expired but prior to it expiring Bitdefender extended it free of charge due to all the issues I complained about. So the extension is running through to Feb 2025 but it is no longer showing up in the Services as the original was purchased through Netgear and has now "expired", so there's nothing to transfer! Neither Netgear nor Bitdefender customer service can transfer the current subscription on the old router as there's no billable account record that's active for it. I tried to reach Bitdefender Support who extended it free of charge but I don't think they want to or can technically transfer it 🙂
I have two options - let the current trial expire on the new router, or enlist for the 50% discount offer if $79.99 NZD - but I'm not sure I want to throw 80 bucks into the ring again for no resolution of basic iOS functionality.
Yes, the security status tile in the Orbi app is useless (certainly for the RBE970 series at least).
I also see the iOS and iPad devices fail to register the presence of Armor.
But lately I have seen this happening (nothing I do will allow the Armor install to be recognised) with some Android devices too so not only has it not been fixed or even improved for years it has become worse.
Not doing anything about this is very bad IMHO particularly as NG are happy to not provide support, basically not listen to you, a very short time after purchase.
But I actually like the "idea" behind the Netgear/Bitdefender product on the Orbi, if it worked as designed I would much prefer to continue to use it over other products such as the security offered for TP Link Deco products which is also quite good. As it is now I end up growing weary of it not working properly and I disable the auto-renew and do what I can to prevent continuing to be billed.
Yes, Netgear also ignores the auto-renew setting and continues to bill me (that's happened more than once now) which is a rather large nail in the coffin of Netgear Armor!. But I continue to hope and have been consistently disappointed over the last few years.
Consider this, the people that are implementing the security system may well be the same people that have made these mistakes (assuming the billing bug is not deliberate) and will not fix the problems. So I have to wonder if we can trust the security implementation will actually keep us safe!
- I agree and don’t know if I’m even going keep staying with it . It does not tell me half time when something connects with my wifi . It keep telling me me to turn notifications all time . It and it don’t even show im connected to it half time . The Blackhawk app is really cheap and got a lot bugs with it I bet I’ve sent 10 requests to report bugs and get nothing back . Netgear really need to fix there stuff . Because the internet show a lot people having same issue .
