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Forum Discussion
How do I remove this garbage from my router?
Updated to the latest Orbi firmware and enabled the trial of armour.
Today the router is blocking my access to legitimate websites falsly claiming they are phishing sites.
I canot see any way to remove the armour service or educate it to the error of its ways
Barring a factory reset on my orbi system how can I get rid of this?
84 Replies
Do yourself a favor...reset the router and just use the same credentials you’re currently using. Everything comes back fast and easy. Log in via web and just hit never remind me again for Armor.
Side note, if you have gigabit internet...do yourself a favor and use the Orbis in AP Mode and run a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 4 as your gateway...NIGHT AND DAY. I realized how much of a burden that Armor was on the Orbi’s routing, so gave that a wing. But yeah...get Armor removed ASAP!
I log in to my PC today, and get a continuous stream of "blocked phishing attempt by URL" messages. It never tells me what URL and I'm not even clicking on any URLs. I don't see any way of disabling Armor, which adds negative value to the Orbi. I'd rather not have to do a full reset.
I would still like to know how to disable Armor, but I am feeling much more kindly to it now. I was being flooded with alerts about phishing, but nothing told me the URL until I happened across the misnamed "Support" link on the Netgear site that took me to a web page version of the Armor control panel. Then if I examined the alerts it gave the domain. NONE of the controls in the Orbi app or the router's admin page showed me this.
Once I had the domain, I was eventually able to identify a Chrome extension I had used for a long time that, it would seem, had been hijacked and turned into malware. (HTML5 Autoplay Blocker)
Armor may in fact be a useful feature, but the implementation and User Interface is horrible!
Does the Ubiquiti edgerouter have similar security features like Bitdefender atmor?
I tried it and I agree—there's nothing special here, and it's definitely not worth $70/year (maybe for a non-power user, or a senior citizen, I can see this being useful). So I found this thread as I was trying to turn it off—and I found it.
I can't speak to all of the possibilities, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the web interfaces (and the Armor web interface is complete dung). So, I dug into the app. On the Orbi app for iOS, you can disable Armor by drilling though the settings (presumably the Android app and the Nighthawks have similar settings).
Go to the home icon in the upper left, then tap settings, then tap Security, and there should then be a toggle to Enable NETGEAR Armor. Just turn the toggle off, like so:
- Thank you!
Yeah, I try to toggle it off, and it tries for 60 seconds then gives up.
"Process is taking too long (more than 60 secs), Try again!!"
Gotta love the extra garbage they put on these things just for a desperate upsell...
i WANT TO KNOW ALSO ! THIS IS COMPLETE GARBAGE, I AM ON HOLD RIGHT NOW GETTING TERRIBLE SERVICE FROM NETGEAR.
THEY WANTED ME TO PAY TO GET THIS SH*T OFF MY ORBI. **bleep** YOU NETGEAR
So Netgear Armour is ransomware!
THEY WANTED ME TO PAY TO GET THIS SH*T OFF MY ORBI. F YOU NETGEAR
- Check your router’s app—that’s where it was for me.
Open up your app go to Settings > Security and toggle the Enable Netgear Armor switch and this will disable it.
I have tried to disable using the app (iOS app, v2.4.21.5) under settings / security but only get an error message when I toggle it "Process is taking too long (more than 60 secs), Try again!" or "Sorry, the action was failed. Please try again" .... so that doesn't work.
Being ever hopeful that I could log into the Orbi (firmware v2.5.1.8) to disable Armor, no such luck. Clicking on Security on the basic / home screen, nothing happens. On the advanced tab, there is no Armor listed under security options -- only parental controls, access control, block sites, block services, schedule, email.
How do I disable??? It's killing my internet performance!
Hello BWest,
Please try reinstalling the Orbi app and/or performing a factory reset on your router.
Christian
I've read through all of the posts with the access blocking issues, and am also having the same negative experience. It appears Netgear's only real response is reset to factory and hope it works. While I completely understand the Netgear moderators are not responsible for creating this issue, they also have not mentioned whether or not Netgear has any intention of actually fixing the issue (reset and hope is not a fix). I would request the moderators find out what Netgear's plans are, if any, related to this issue, and let us all know the status. As a long time Netgear customer, I'm extreamly disappointed in the Armour/Bitdefender issue they have created.
I have the exact same problem.
Having to do a factory reset of my router because of some sleazy ploy Netgear did to get unwanted software installed is not good.
- Armor crap as I understand and Net gear BS. I’ve had problems before DONT PAY FOR THEIR BS TECH SERVICES. When I did an upgrade of firmware before I could not use my remote access after the update anymore. After paying the 50 bucks for three months tech service talking to them for over a week and probably literally 17 different technicians and even being transferred to the same ones because I started writing names down. The answer to the solution was go back to the last version of software before the update.
This was Net Gears solution to the problem. The reason was not everything will work correctly in firmware upgrades I was told. After talking to 3 managers about a credit for their firmware update being the problem then telling them I’ll call my CC company and have them deal with the issue Net Gear finally gave me the credit.
Going forward I now always keep downloaded the firmware version that works do the upgrade then if something doesn’t work I go back to the prior versions. You can download then still from Net-gears website. Then I wait for the bugs to be fixed before I upgrade again.
Good luck all hope this helps. This garbage messed up everything in my house that was connected to the router, total garbage.
Be careful when I tried to remove mine it the app took admin rights over my android phone.
- Despite having the capability of turning off this service in the app or, what is working for me me for now, turning it off in the administrative panel at 192.168.1.1>Advanced>Security>Netgear Armor, having this trash self-install and propagate through my network conveys a total lack of respect from Netgear. This service could be compared to Apple’s claims that their devices are unhackable. Sure, if you close every port, disable every URL and extension, unplug all of your network gear, hit your devices with a sledge hammer, and then toss all of the remnants into an incinerator... you probably won’t have any problems with malware or phishing... no $#!+
Do yourself a favor and select “No thanks... and never show me this again” as soon as you plug in your new network device. But defender can suck it. - I can confirm all the findings everyone mentioned here but have fixed it before returning my RBK753S to Costco. Disabling armor does not work. Customer support from Netgear and Bitdefender tried to disable/deactivate armor does not solve the issue either. I can't confirm this but factory reset through reset button in the back doesn't seem to work either.
Here are the things I did that I'm not even sure which step really solve the issue with websites being blocked. Make sure your satellites are off. Isolate the modem and main router unit by powering off both for a few minutes and power cycle and reconnect router to modem. Do a factory reset of the router through the back button. (Step A) Once it's back, do manual set up (not through app), setup the router normally and choose the armor pop-up to not remind you again. See if websites still get blocked. If they are , this step maybe the key to fixing it: I did a second factory reset in the router configuration page and repeat Step A. If after the setup is done with internet connection, issues were solved here for me as I started testing websites. Once it works, reset each satellite and add them to your router. I notice a couple times the model # (gray out part) of the satellite get blanked out when I try to rename the satellite. If it does, reset the satellite again until you see the model #. Good luck Kind of unrelated, but I think it needs to be said:
I'm seeing a lot of Netgear Armor hate on here and maybe it's warranted.
But in my opinion, you're not seeing the full picture.
Sure, maybe Armor itself is horrible. I haven't run into any issues with it yet.
However, the important thing to note is that for $70 per year, you also get to install the accompanying BitDefender Total Security on UNLIMITED DEVICES!
If you purchase BitDefender Total Security directly from BitDefender, you only get 5 devices for that price... and that's just the first year. The second year they're going to charge you a renewal rate of $120 or something like that.I may be getting rid of my R7000 sooner than later, but as long as they let me keep renewing, I'm keeping Netgear Armor simply for the discoutned BitDefender subscription.
dagu599I agree with you the Armor feature is great value for the money when you compare it with the price you pay for BitDefender Total Intenet Security from the BD website or BestBuy.
I would also like to address some of the hate here and blame on Netgear Armor hopefully my explanation will help those users having issues with Armor. Netgear Armor just like any other internet security software out there block threats and websites based on definitions and known blacklists some from the public domain some from proprietory blacklists that Bitdefender has. So there is no way that Armor would block all of the traffic to the internet otherwise what would be the point of having it installed if you cannot browse anything.
Let's address reasons why the disable option may not work or why the traffic to all sites may be blocked.
- Netgear Armor enables/disable status depends on Netgear cloud and BD cloud infrastructure that how the status of Armor is detected, both of these clouds use the Netgear SSO to login into the systems and link Armor to your Netgear SSO account/SN of product.
- The Netgear SSO uses a token like any other system that requires authentication and sometimes the token does not expire correctly or gets stuck so when you try to disable Armor you use the option in the NH or Orbi app and toggle it off but becue the sso token did not expire correctly or got stuck the disabling does not take effect.
- This is not a bug in the system it's just the nature of the system and token issues that may arise from internet connectivity issues, etc. that arise when things freeze up, etc.
- Rebooting or logging out of your NH or Orbi app and logging back in fixes that issue.
For cases where Internet traffic seems to be blocked keep in mind the following:
- Netgear Armor feature is installed on Netgear devices and that requires space and when Armor processes run they all require memory to operate.
- Routers are limited in their capacity when it comes to memory both system and ram. It's not a PC so you won't find a router that has 64GB of ram or something crazy like that, it's limited usually to 4GB or less in most cases and system memory/space is limited even more.
- Sometimes the issue of the internet traffic not going through could be related to the memory usage of the device especially in cases where you may have a device that is packed with tons of features like the R7000, RBR20, etc and not much system/RAM. I have been using Armor on the RBK50 Orbi system and RBK852 since it came out and never had any issues with it blocking internet traffic.
- Other reasons that the internet traffic may not work could be related to the websites you are visiting especially if the browser is using extensions that behave in a questionable way or websites that run active x and other applets and things in the background. If these are flagged by Armor the page may not load at all or it will partially load. If there is a site you trust that should not be blocked you can white list that site on your device using NH or Orbi app.
- Other problems could be related to the DNS issues to other internet problems you’re your router or isp modem/gateway.
So for anyone out there thinking that Armor is garbage and blame all problems on it please consider the above info and do some investigation as to what is the root cause of your problem. If you discover odd behavior or a bug or issues on your device please report it to Netgear support. Venting on community and keeping issues to yourself will not improve the feature or help fix the problem you are facing if Netgear support or engineering is not aware of the problem. Based on my experience with Armor 99% of the time issues such as all internet traffic being blocked are not related to Armor but some other underlying issue.
I understand your side of explanation on Netgear Armor. However, to deploy this kind of feature on their own hardware products(Orbi) that cause a lot of problems on end users is not acceptable, specifically on the testing/quality assurance. We're talking about well-known websites getting blocked. The issue is not well-supported by Netgear's support team themselves, which is why so many end users are frustrated. You cannot expect every end user to have an engineering/troubleshooting mind either. I think the main issue is something related to memory corruption that requires some certain of steps to clear it out.
That's it. I finally gave up on my R7000.
After the firmware update from about May 2020, the router became extremely unstable.
I thought it was my ISP, though, so I stuck with the router for over a year.I tried everything, including resetting the router to defaults. Nothing helped.
Every day, Wifi would disconnect every device in the house, including streaming sticks for at least 2 minutes.
Hardwire network still worked - router logs showed nothing.
I finally bought a replacement router ASUS RT-AX88U.
WOW! What a difference.
Haven't had a single issue.
Netgear, you need to get your act together.
I used to swear by Netgear... Now I swear at Netgear.
